Maraseni, Aakriti

Aakriti Maraseni is an Erasmus Mundus Scholar currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in Aquaculture, Environment and Society (ACES-STAR), with academic mobility across Scotland (Scottish Association for Marine Science, UHI), Greece (University of Crete), and France (Nantes University). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Fisheries from the Agriculture and Forestry University, Nepal, where she was honored with both the Chancellor’s and Vice Chancellor’s Awards by the honorable Prime Minister of Nepal.

Her undergraduate research studies focused on evaluating sustainable feed types for Nile tilapia species, which deepened her growing interest in sustainability in aquaculture practices. She has actively been part of various Model United Nations conferences and reflecting on that experience, she shares ‘Being part of MUN conferences helped me understand how the United Nations functions and sparked my curiosity about the role of research in shaping global policies’.

During her research internship at UNU-CRIS, Aakriti will primarily focus on seaweed aquaculture in Japan, to contribute to the https://globalseaweedprotect.org/ project, GlobalSeaweed-PROTECT is working to improve livelihoods for the long-term for seaweed farming communities in Southeast Asia by building a productive seaweed industry that is resilient to climate change, is biosecure and protects wild seaweed diversity and is looking into best practices around the region and beyond.

She will work under the supervision of Nidhi Nagabhatla within the Nature, Climate, and Health Cluster. She will also contribute to a secondary project on barriers to community engagement in early warning systems for disaster risk reduction in Nepal. Aakriti is eager to learn from this experience and see how it shapes her personally and professionally.