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