Dunya Diyadawagamage is a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a Master’s of Science in Environmental Science and Sustainability with specializations in Sustainability & Development and Sustainable Systems. Dunya also has a degree in environmental sciences and a minor in engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her current research interests involve the intersection between industry and conservation.
An immigrant, Dunya has centered her work around environmental topics that benefit communities in her home state of Illinois and her mother country,Sri Lanka. With her strong desire to learn, she is constantly exploring different avenues of research, yet her projects have always come back to biodiversity. She has designed floating cities for climate refugees, reviewed water-credit trading systems for farms and municipalities, conducted fieldwork on tropical marine ecosystems, optimized engineering documentation standards for sustainability reporting, organized beach cleanings, removed invasive plant species, planted native species, and more. Her passion continues to drive her into new and exciting experiences.