BIO – Dr. Amadei is a Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Civil Engineering at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in 1982 from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Amadei is the Founding Director of the Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities (now Global Engineering). He is also the founding president of Engineers Without Borders-USA and a co-founder of the Engineers Without Borders International Network. Among other distinctions, Dr. Amadei is an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Construction. He is also an elected Senior Ashoka Fellow, has been inducted into the ASEE Hall of Fame, and received the 2026 American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Award of Merit. Dr. Amadei holds seven honorary doctoral degrees (UMass Lowell, Carroll College, Clarkson, Drexel, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Technion, and SUNY-ESF). In 2013 and 2014, Dr. Amadei served as a Science Envoy to Pakistan and Nepal for the US Department of State. In 2025, Dr. Amadei completed the book, Engineering for Peace and Diplomacy. His new book, Engineering With Soul, will be published in 2026. Dr. Amadei holds a commercial pilot license (multi-engine land, instrument).

A NEXUS APPROACH TO PEACE, SUSTAINABILITY, & CLIMATE SECURITY – It is difficult to envision a sustainable community that is not peaceful and climate-secure, a peaceful community that does not sustain livelihoods and ecosystems, or a climate-secure community that is geopolitically unstable and environmentally unsustainable. Likewise, water-energy-land-food security is unlikely when one dimension of the peace–sustainability–climate security nexus is weak or absent. For this reason, a nexus approach is more appropriate than treating these sectors in isolation.

Peace, sustainability, and climate security are deeply entangled through complex social, environmental, economic, and political interactions. Yet their intersection is rarely analyzed through a systemic lens. A multi-solving nexus perspective is therefore essential for community development, as it encourages examination of how these domains interact, reinforce one another, or generate vulnerability.

A major challenge in developing integrated nexus models is the limited availability of reliable data across interconnected sectors and scales.

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