People Page

Dr. Venkatesan Chakrapani, MD, PhD, is Chairperson of the Centre for Sexuality and Health Research and Policy (C-SHaRP) in Chennai, and a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance CRC Grantee at The Humsafar Trust in Mumbai. He completed his MD from Madras Medical College and his PhD from the School of Public Health at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER). Dr. Chakrapani brings over two decades of experience in policy-oriented health research – focusing on describing, explaining, and addressing health inequities among sexual and gender minority communities. He has published 80+ peer-reviewed research articles (https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9998-9135), six book chapters and 70+ policy/technical reports. As the Chair of the Technical Resource Group (TRG) on HIV prevention/care among trans people under the National AIDS Control Organization (NACO) and as a member of NACO’s TRG on HIV prevention/care among men who have sex with men, he contributes to improving policies and programmes. He has also served as a member of the “Expert Committee on the issues relating to Transgender Persons” for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. He has received prestigious fellowships such as the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Senior Fellowship and the NIH Fogarty Fellowship from Yale University.

I am a cognitive scientist with research experience since 2014, starting with a master's in Cognitive Science from the Centre of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences, Allahabad. I have a bachelor's in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Anna University, Chennai. I also engage in AI ethics research (accidentally!)

I have held research positions at IIT Kanpur, NIMHANS (Bengaluru), and New York University Abu Dhabi. My interdisciplinary research spans computational modeling, machine (deep) learning, visual perception, and cognitive neuroscience, with projects in the areas of visual scene perception, emotional scene processing, visual word recognition, corpus-based psycholinguistics, computational psychiatry, dementia research, and behavioural game theory. 

I am passionate about understanding brain algorithms and exploring the missing links between the top-down and bottom-up approaches to computation. I'm also intrigued by how advanced technologies can mimic and augment human cognitive processes. This raises profound questions about what it means to be human, the nature of self, agency, and consciousness.

I have taught courses on cognitive processes (basic & advanced) at IIT Kanpur and served as a TA for the Neuromatch Academy’s Deep Learning and NeuroAI summer courses for two years, and also taught the Cognitive Science & Research course as a visiting faculty (Strate School of Design).

D.B.Venkatesh Varma served in the Indian Foreign Service from 1988 to 2021. During his diplomatic career, he worked in the Office of the External Affairs Minister and in the Prime Minister’s Office. He served as India’s Ambassador to Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, to the Kingdom of Spain and to the Russian Federation, until October 2021.He has vast experience in India’s Security and Defence policies and served as Joint Secretary in charge of Disarmament and International Security in the Ministry of External Affairs. He was the first Recipient of the S.K.Singh Award for Excellence in the Indian Foreign Service in 2011 for his contribution to the negotiations of the Civil Nuclear Initiative. He is a Distinguished Fellow at the VIF New Delhi.  He is a member of the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters

Prof. M.Jayananda has unique blende of expertise across several disciplines of geosciences including tectonic fabric analysis, petrology, solid earth geochemistry and radiogenic isotopes. He has focused multidisciplinary research on early Earth dynamics, origin of habitable continents, shift from anoxic to oxygenation of Archean ocean, Cenozoic surface dynamics, landscape evolution and topographic build-up in Western Ghats. Recently he has initiated a new study on Trans-Himalaya addressing the magmatism, tectonics, environmental crisis across Permo-Triassic boundary. For the past four decades he has worked in Universities in India (Bangalore University, Delhi University and Hyderabad Central University) and France (Universite de Rennes I) contributing to research, teaching, mentoring PhD, post-docs, outreach, and public engagement. He has also contributed to the global science community as Editor-in-Chief of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) flagship journal ’Episodes’ 2009-2013, Editor-in-Chief of the Himalayan Geology (2017-), Associate Editor of Journal of Earth System Science (2013-2016), Regional Editor of Gondwana Research (2004-2007), Editorial board member Journal of Geological Society of India (2009-2018), Precambrian Research (2020-) and Jour Asian Earth Sciences (2008-).  He has participated in IUGS programs (IGCP projects), participating in National Committees, outreach activities by delivering lectures at different Universities and as a mentor at Government of India flagship science program of Inspire Camps for high school students. In view of these contributions to research, academics, mentoring of students, capacity building and promotion of science through editing/reviewing, he has been conferred several National Awards, elected to the Fellowship of all the three National Science Academies of India and J.C. Bose National Fellowship.

Sub Maj & Hony Lt., C. Arul Anand (Retd) joined NIAS, Bangalore on 01 April 2024. Prior to joining NIAS, he has served in the Indian Army (Corps of Engineers) for 32 years 08 months and superannuated from service on 29 February 2024. He holds a Bachelor Degree in English Literature from Madurai Kamaraj University.

The prominent appointments tenated by him during his career in Indian Army includes Head Clerk of an Engineer Regiment, Office Superintendent and Asst. Administrative Officer in Military Engineering Services (Ministry of Defence). In his distinguished and illustrious military career spanning almost 33 years, he has the distinction of serving in various operational areas like Op Rakshak (J&K), Op Parakram and Op Rhino.

As Office Manager, his duties involve supervision of Admin office/support staff, handling of petty cash expenses, maintaining office files/documents, and personal records, leave register and providing various facilities for the day-to-day functioning of the Institute. He is also responsible for managing security staff and contract Labours as well as Institute infrastructure. In addition to the above, he is responsible for providing logistic support, which is required in conducting various events/programmes being conducted at the Institute. He executes the works under the guidance of Head-Administration.

Mr. Anil Kumar completed a Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Nuclear Physics from University of Delhi, India.

He started his career as an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer in the year 1986. During 34 years of his distinguished services, he extensively dealt with issues relating to security of vital installations and important persons as well as issues relating to terrorism and anti-corruption. He superannuated from Government Service from the rank of Director General in 2020.

During his service, he also got an opportunity to work with Department of Atomic Energy as Inspector General (Security), Mumbai, from 2011 to 2016, where he supervised and advised on the physical security of installations of the Department of Atomic Energy, GOI. He participated in various training courses on Nuclear Security conducted by IAEA and GCNEP. He made significant contributions to the revision of the Physical Security Manual of DAE installations and various SOPs. During his tenure, he coordinated meetings of various inter-ministerial committees on security matters of Atomic Energy establishments in India. He also participated in various mock exercises on Nuclear Safety & Security.

Navneet Bhushan founded CRAFITTI (www.crafitti.com) in 2008, an innovation consulting firm, incubated at IIM Bangalore. He started as a Scientist at DRDO (ISSA) (1990-2000). His corporate stints (2000-2008) include Infosys, Philips, Wipro, and Hexaware besides serving as India CEO of CREAX. He is visiting faculty for warfare simulations and strategies for M. Tech. (Defence Technology) and for strategic design management at the National Institute of Design. Amity Institute of Defence Technology awarded him Honorary Professor title in 2022. He is a Member of the Board of School of National Security Studies, Central University Gujarat.

Navneet is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making – Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process which is featured at Harvard Business School Working Knowledge for Business Leaders and has 1460+ google scholar citations. Navneet developed “Inventive Energy” as the new patent trends metric on which two books have been published.  His book on innovation and entrepreneurship - “Bhelpuri Thoughts” was published in 2022.

Navneet is an associate editor of International Journal of AHP and regularly writes on defence at http://www.indiandefencereview.com/author/navneetbhushan/. MTech in Computer Science and Engineering (IIT Madras), an M.Sc. in Software Science (Allahabad University), and a B.Sc. in Physics (Hons.) (Delhi University), Navneet holds diplomas in IPR (NLSIU, Bangalore) and Patent Information (The Netherlands).