Sarah is a Ph.D. scholar in the School of Humanities. She has a Masters in English. Her research focuses on experimental life-narratives, especially those which challenge restricted textual spaces and dominant structures of knowledge and representation. It aims to understand narrative structures, techniques of documentation, and role of memory in texts by women which become sites of resistance and means of transformation.
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).