Venue: Howard College Theatre
ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Professor Kalpana Balakrishnan is the Dean (Research) and Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Occupational and Environmental Health at the ICMR Centre for Advanced Research on Air Quality, Climate and Health in the Sri Ramachandra Institute for Higher Education and Research, Chennai, India.
She is a leading global environmental health researcher and has made seminal contributions for (i) developing novel exposure assessment approaches to characterize household and ambient air pollution exposures of rural and urban populations in low and middle income countries (ii) designing and conducting large scale cohort studies across multiple states in India, to generate primary data on exposureresponse relationships for air pollution and health and (iii) building national and regional capacities for occupational and environmental health, through collaborative academic and training initiatives.
Dr. Balakrishnan has contributed as a technical expert for many international assessments including The World Health Organisation Air Quality Guidelines, The IARC Monographs and The Global Energy Assessments, The Global and India State Level Burden of Disease initiatives and the UNEP Asia Pacific Regional Assessments. She also serves in multiple national and global technical review committees for addressing air quality, climate, health and energy risks in developing countries.
She is a recipient of numerous awards including the Clarivate India Research Excellence Citation award (2021), the Public Health Foundation of India award (2008) for Outstanding Scientist in Public Health, The Hari Om Ashram Trust Award(2000) for Outstanding Scientist administered by the University Grants Commission, Govt. of India, the Outstanding Woman Scientist Award(1999) of The Government of Tamil Nadu and The Award for Excellence in Environmental Health Research(1998) administered by Harvard Medical International. She is also a distinguished fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences.