Dr Fasipe Olatubosun Ade is working at an increasingly important intersection of water, energy and environmental sustainability, combining engineering research with practical approaches to some of the challenges facing developing energy and water systems.

An Assistant Chief Scientific Officer at the Energy Commission of Nigeria (ECN), Dr Fasipe has spent more than a decade researching hydrology, hydropower, geospatial science, energy planning and climate resilience.

His work has taken him from Nigeria’s energy sector to the University of California, Berkeley, where he became the first researcher with a PhD from an African university to receive the Miller Research Fellowship in the fellowship’s 66-year history.

For Dr Fasipe, the central challenge is not simply producing more energy or developing additional water infrastructure. It is making better decisions about where resources should be developed, how they should be managed and how environmental, economic and social interests can be balanced.

“Practically, through my research of over a decade, I have been involved in quantifying energy needs with a view of establishing baselines for energy use or need sustainably,” he said.

His research has particularly focused on hydropower, an area where the availability of water does not automatically translate into viable energy projects.

In Nigeria and other countries with poorly gauged river basins, limited long-term streamflow data can make it difficult to determine whether a proposed hydropower site is technically and economically feasible.

Addressing that challenge became a major component of Dr Fasipe’s doctoral research.

He developed the Small Hydropower Resource Assessment and Sustainability Analysis (SHPRASA), an optimisation framework designed to combine hydrological assessment with sustainability considerations when evaluating small hydropower resources.

The framework incorporates what he describes as smart project identifier parameters covering cost, emissions and energy. These factors can help identify potential small hydropower sites while considering their economic, environmental and energy characteristics.

The research also examined the suitability of PERSIANN-Climate Data Record (CDR) data for hydrological research in Nigeria, potentially providing researchers and planners with an additional source of information in areas where conventional streamflow records are limited.

One of the broader contributions of the work is the development of a hydrological regionalisation exponent for Nigeria. Such tools can help water-resource planners estimate hydrological characteristics in poorly gauged basins without relying exclusively on extensive and expensive field surveys.

That has implications beyond research institutions. Better hydrological information can improve decisions around water infrastructure, irrigation, flood management and small hydropower development.

Dr Fasipe’s research has since expanded into artificial intelligence and spatial decision-making.

At the Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology Laboratory in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, he is developing an AI-enabled multicriteria spatial decision-support system for sustainable hydropower planning.

The research combines satellite remote sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), artificial intelligence and expert-guided multicriteria analysis to assess the suitability of potential hydropower locations.

Rather than examining a site through a single technical or economic lens, the approach considers multiple factors simultaneously.

Dr Fasipe said the research was partly motivated by international disputes and environmental challenges associated with major water and hydropower projects, including the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and conflicts surrounding the Klamath River in the United States.

“My current research at UC Berkeley is motivated by some real world international crises in hydropower development, like the transboundary conflicts surrounding the development of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and the Klamath River in the United States of America, where tribal rights are ignored, and salmon fish populations collapsed,” he said.

According to him, his research team has developed nine trade-off models that are being refined to help decision-makers examine competing interests before major hydropower investments are made.

The objective is to move water and energy planning away from reactive, site-by-site decisions towards approaches that can identify potential environmental, economic and social consequences earlier.

“Advancing clean energy through water resources cannot rely solely on reactive, site-by-site decisions. Proactive, spatially explicit, and multicriteria decision analysis must guide where investments occur, whose interests are protected, and which sustainability trajectories are pursued,” he said.

The approach is particularly relevant as countries seek to expand renewable energy while facing growing concerns about climate change, water availability, biodiversity and the rights of communities affected by major infrastructure projects.

Dr Fasipe’s work also extends beyond research.

Through his role with the Energy Commission of Nigeria, he has participated in initiatives aimed at strengthening energy access and technical capacity in communities. These have included training young people in the installation and maintenance of solar home systems and solar-powered water boreholes.

His experience as a Miller Research Fellow has also reinforced his interest in science communication and education.

At UC Berkeley, he has participated in outreach initiatives involving the use of spatial engineering tools to demonstrate scientific concepts to middle-school students in California.

“My scientific demonstrations with spatial engineering tools help inspire California middle school students towards pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) careers,” he said.

For Dr Fasipe, these experiences are connected to a broader philosophy of engineering education. Technical knowledge, he believes, becomes more valuable when it can be translated into practical understanding and applied to real-world problems.

His career therefore reflects a combination of scientific research, public-sector energy work, engineering education and community capacity building.

As countries across Africa confront energy deficits, water insecurity and increasing climate pressures, the ability to understand the relationship between these systems is becoming increasingly important.

Hydropower can contribute to cleaner electricity generation, but its development can also affect river systems, ecosystems, communities and competing water users. Decisions made without adequate data or consideration of these trade-offs can create problems that become considerably more expensive to resolve later.

Dr Fasipe’s research seeks to address that challenge by giving engineers and policymakers better tools for assessing those choices before projects are implemented.

His work demonstrates the increasingly important role of engineering at the intersection of water security, energy access and environmental sustainability.

From developing hydrological tools for poorly gauged Nigerian basins to applying artificial intelligence and geospatial analysis at UC Berkeley, Dr Fasipe is building a research career focused not only on understanding complex systems but also on improving the decisions made around them.

As the global demand for clean energy grows and competition over water resources intensifies, that combination of engineering expertise, data-driven planning and sustainability thinking could become increasingly valuable to Nigeria and other countries confronting similar challenges.