Dr. Sagynbek Orunbaev is an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Sustainability and Climate Science at the American University of Central Asia and leads the Remote Sensing and GIS Center. He earned his undergraduate degree with honors in Applied Mathematics from Kyrgyz State National University, a Master’s degree in Natural Disaster Risk Management from GRIPS (Tokyo, Japan), and a Ph.D. in Natural Hazard Assessment from the Institute of Dynamics of Geospheres, Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow).
Dr. Orunbaev is an environmental geo-data scientist and geophysicist with over 25 years of experience in geospatial data analytics across environmental, climate change, hydrological, hydrogeological, natural disasters, and agricultural applications. He integrates satellite remote sensing, spatial analysis, and geophysical methods, serving as PI and Co-PI in international R&D projects. In addition, he serves as a coordinator for CARIN (Central Asia Research Information Network), facilitating regional collaboration and capacity building in climate, water, and environmental research.

He has made over 100 scholarly contributions, including 50+ peer-reviewed papers (h-index 13). His work has been supported by BMBF, Volkswagen Stiftung, World Bank, ADB, JICA, USAID, CIDA, and AKDN. He is co-founder and head of KyrCOLD and a member of ICOLD. His research focuses on climate change, natural hazards, water systems, and infrastructure resilience.