Avijit Gupta is an Honorary Principal Fellow at the University of Wollongong, Australia, and a Visiting Scientist at the Centre for Remote Imaging, Sensing and Processing, National University of Singapore. He was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and Johns Hopkins University. He has held university positions in India, the USA, Singapore and the UK. His research interests focus on fluvial geomorphology in the tropics, rivers with high-magnitude floods, large rivers, urban geomorphology and the application of remote sensing in geomorphology. Dr Gupta has served as a Committee Member of the International Geographical Union Commission on Measurement, Theory and Applications in Geomorphology (COMTAG) and the International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG). He is currently the Chair of the IAG Working Group on the Effect of Climate Change on Large Rivers and Deltas. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Association of American Geographers, the Society of Sedimentary Geologists and the International Association of Hydrological Sciences. He is also a corresponding member of the Academie Royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer, Belgium. He is on the editorial board of two journals on geomorphology. Dr Gupta has written 8 books and over 70 research papers. He recently edited The Physical Geography of Southeast Asia (Oxford University Press, 2005) and Large Rivers: Geomorphology and Management (Wiley, 2007).