Professor Zaman’s Lecture on the Global Refugee Crisis: What can scientist and engineers do to ease the suffering and protect the vulnerable?

Professor Muhammad Zaman, BU Center on Forced Displacement cofounder and director, presented on Thursday, October 6, 2022 to the Kleh Family Foundation Distinguished Lecture. In the lecture, Professor Zaman spoke about some of his work in the lab, the field, and in the classroom that aims to address the global refugee crisis. Earlier this year, the UN refugee agency projected that more than 100 million people are forced to leave their homes because of war, persecution, and climate change. Due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Afghanistan’s economic collapse, Pakistan’s floods, and other economic devastation, the number of displaced people has since continued to rise. Despite the fact that dealing with refugees is one of the biggest worldwide challenges of our day, science and engineering research has historically played a very small part in the discussion of refugee issues. Boston University research tries to challenge this paradigm. Professor Zaman talked about novel approaches that are being developed and used in urban informal settlements and refugee camps for disease surveillance and better access to healthcare among the most vulnerable, policy recommendations that we have been a part of in multiple countries hosting refugees and communities of internally displaced people, and pedagogical approaches that have been developed and used in BU classrooms to address this issue.