IWMI : About IWMI - People

MURAT YAKUBOV

Researcher

IWMI Central Asia

Before joining IWMI, Murat YAKUBOV had quite a diverse (if not bizarre) history of employment working as an Urdu and Hindi newscaster, cotton classing information engineer, local representative for an Israeli company, media manager for a local advertising agency, web-master, free-lance translator and interpreter for international companies and organizations, just to mention a few. Initially, his academic background was oriental studies with special interest in the Urdu & Hindi languages, literature and history. He spent 6 years studying the subject area both in Uzbekistan and India. In the late 90’s this was complemented by business studies in the University of Swinburne (Melbourne, Australia) resulting in Graduate Certificate in Business Administration. His major asset during all those years was a good command of foreign languages which coupled with such specialist areas he worked in as radio broadcasting, cotton classing, agriculture, irrigation, advertising, web-designing etc. helped develop quite a range of various interests and expertise. He has been working for IWMI since July, 2002 initially hired as Translator and Interpreter for IWMI’s Integrated Water Resource Management in the Ferghana Valley Project. The job involved translating , editing, proofreading and interpreting major project documents and events, a lot of field visits in the pilot areas of three countries – Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, and facilitating various other project activities. Murat, though hired originally for interpreting and translations, had to take-over some responsibilities outside his area of expertise - conducting a baseline survey, shaping and organizing SMID activities, launching SMID teams, orienting field supervisor into new job etc. Given these additional responsibilities without compromising his original work as well as an anticipated extension of the Fergana Valley project, he was encouraged in February, 2004 to take over a research carrier with IWMI and was promoted to the position of a Research Officer.

Email: m.yakubov@cgiar.org