Dr Rijan Bhakta Kayastha (Visiting Senior Professor, Department of Environmental Science, Kathmandu University, Nepal) has 32 years of experience in Himalayan glaciology. His higher education M. Sc., D. Sc., and JSPS postdoc were at Nagoya University, Japan, and his Max-Planck Foreign Postdoc was at the Max-Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Jena, Germany. His research areas include understanding glacier mass balance through field and modelling techniques; the impacts of climate change on glaciers and water resources; estimating ablation using energy balance and positive degree-day models; and glacial hazards such as glacier lake outburst floods.