About The Author

Nayar transitioned to working in film and storytelling from pure science (climate change, remote sensing) in the early 2000s, after being frustrated by the inaccuracies by the media in its coverage of climate change. In 2005, she turned down a scholarship to continue her studies at the University of Oxford at the PhD level, to take up a Fulbright Scholarship at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. Her first piece of journalism, a profile of a New York climate modeler, was published in the New York Times. Nayar has a Masters in Documentary from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where she studied, as a Fulbright Scholar. Nayar also has a Masters in Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Commonwealth Scholar. Nayar’s thesis at Oxford assessed the use of remote sensing imagery to predict urbanization and malaria rates in African cities. Nayar also spent a summer studying remote sensing and space studies at the International Space University, hosted by the University of Adelaide and the University of Western Australia. As an undergraduate student, Nayar did a double Honours degree in biology and geology at the University of British Columbia on a Chancellor’s scholarship. During her years at UBC, she played varsity Soccer for the UBC Thunderbirds and spent a year on exchange at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia studying coral reefs and climate change. Before that, she was the Valedictorian, an academic All-Canadian and received Governor General’s Bronze Medal (1999) for her year at John Abbott College, in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec. Nayar went to high school at the Trafalgar School for Girls, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.