Faculty
Ashoka University Faculty
Faculty Directory
Pavan is an empirically informed senior advisor in the policy space, and a dedicated teacher, who believes in democratising education, and demystifying complex ideas, and communicating them effectively to management and policy students. Substantively, he pursues two streams of professional work and scholarship – law/policy, and applied behaviour science.
He currently serves as the Director of the Centre for Social and Behaviour Change at Ashoka University, and also works closely with Niti Aayog. He has led the initiative to set up India’s first Nudge Unit, the Behavioral Insights Unit of India, which is an embedded team out of Niti. He has also helped set up a Behavioral Insights Units for the states of Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. His main work focuses on development related issues in education, health, nutrition, and gender.
Additionally, Pavan takes immense pride in cooking rural Telangana food, and believes that the green chilly is good for the soul, and builds character!
He has a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) from the University of Oxford, a Masters (LL.M.) from Harvard Law School, and a highly subsidised and inexpensive Bachelor’s in Mathematics from the finest public institution in the world – Osmania University!
Dr Pawan Mamidi
Director, CSBC, Ashoka University
Rudrangshu Mukherjee is an internationally renowned historian and author and the founding Vice-Chancellor of Ashoka University. He was previously Editor, Editorial Pages of The Telegraph, Kolkata and has taught History at the University of Calcutta and held visiting appointments at Princeton University, the University of Manchester and University of California.
His works on the Revolt of 1857, beginning with Awadh in Revolt, 1857-58: A Study of Popular Resistance, and including his recent A Begum & A Rani: Hazrat Mahal and Lakshmibai in 1857 have become the standard references in the field. He has also authored and edited several books including The Penguin Gandhi Reader, New Delhi: The Making of a Capital, Great Speeches of Modern India, Nehru & Bose: Parallel Lives and most recently Tagore & Gandhi : Walking Alone, Walking Together.
Contacts:
Rudrangshu Mukherjee
Chancellor, Ashoka University
Natasha Badhwar is a writer, teacher and film-maker. She is the visiting faculty at the Media Studies and Creative Writing Department at Ashoka University, and the author of ‘Immortal for A Moment’ and ‘My Daughter’s Mum’. She also runs a Substack called ‘Immortal for a Moment’ by Natasha Badhwar. Natasha runs the Ochre Sky Workshops with Raju Tai.
Contacts:
Natasha Badhwar
Visiting Faculty, Ashoka University
Pooja Haldea is a Senior Advisor at the Centre for Social and Behavioural Change, Ashoka University. Pooja is an expert in the area of applied behavioural science, especially in public health, nutrition, data privacy and financial inclusion. She advises both social sector as well as private sector organisations on how to use behavioural science for greater impact. She helped set up the Centre and led the Centre’s effort to put in place the first Behavioural Insights Unit (Nudge Unit) within the Indian government. She leads the Centre’s work on financial inclusion and data privacy.
Pooja Haldea
Senior Advisor, CSBC, Ashoka University
Partha Pratim Das obtained his PhD in 1988. He served as a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Kharagpur, from 1988 to 1998. He then shifted from academics to industry, initially as a Director for Alumnus Software and as the CEO of a start-up A Quaint Technology before joining Interra Systems as a Senior Director and Centre Head, Kolkata in 2001. His areas of expertise include computer vision, digital learning, digital geometry, and image processing.
Partha Pratim Das
Founding Director, Centre for Data Science & Analytics, Ashoka University
Anurag Agrawal is Dean, BioSciences and Health Research, Trivedi School of Biosciences, Ashoka University, India, and former director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology, a national laboratory of CSIR, India. After completing graduate medical education at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, he further trained in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, USA, followed by a PhD in Physiology from Delhi University.
Anurag Agrawal
Dean, BioSciences and Health Research, Trivedi School of Biosciences
Amita Baviskar’s work on environmental change and social inequality has been fundamental to developing the field of environmental sociology in India. The Infosys Prize and several other honours recognize the importance of her research.
She has taught at the University of Delhi and the Institute of Economic Growth, and has been a visiting scholar at several universities including Stanford, Cornell, SciencesPo, and the University of Cape Town. She has served as a member of the Forest Advisory Committee of the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Amita Baviskar
Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology, Ashoka University
Madhavi Menon is an eminent theorist and scholar of gender, sexuality, politics, and identity. She joined Ashoka University in 2013 as one of its founding faculty members. She went on to establish the university’s Centre for Gender & Sexuality Studies (CSGS), which is the first of its kind in India. Previously, she was a professor at Ithaca College and American University.
Most prominently known for her work on queer theory and Shakespeare, she has also edited the collection Shakesqueer and written three books on Shakespeare and sexuality. She is also most recently the author of Infinite Varieties: A History of Desire in India and Law of Desire: Rulings on Sex & Sexuality in India.
Madhavi Menon
Director, Centre for Studies in Gender & Sexuality, Ashoka Universit
Meghna is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Ashoka University. She received her PhD in Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology from Columbia University, and an MS from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Prior to joining Ashoka University, she was a postdoctoral research scientist at Earth Institute, Columbia University, and Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Bogor, Indonesia.
Her current projects focus on long-term impacts of climate change on forest dynamics, ecosystem services of plantations, and human-elephant conflict. Her current work is funded by SERB and Swedish Research Council and is located in Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Nepal. She also consults for geo-spatial and forestry projects.
Meghna Agarwala
Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Ashoka University
Gautam Menon is a Professor of Physics and Biology at Ashoka University. He heads its Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability (3CS) and is currently Dean (Research) at Ashoka University. He was recently appointed a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on “Strengthening the use of Epidemiological Modelling”.
He completed a BSc (Hons) in physics at St. Stephens College, Delhi, an MSc from IIT Kanpur, and a Ph.D from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He serves on the scientific review committees of several international and national agencies, including the Human Frontier Science Program and the Wellcome Trust-DBT India Alliance, as well as on a number of national committees.
Gautam Menon
Professor of Physics and Biology, Ashoka University
Lipika Dey is a Professor of Computer Science. She was earlier a Chief Scientist at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Research, where she was heading research on the theme of Economic and Financial Intelligence. Her research interests are in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing and Data Analytics. She has a keen interest in the fields of healthcare and sustainability analytics. Prior to joining TCS, Lipika was a member of the faculty at the Department of Mathematics, IIT Delhi. Lipika was elected to the Fellowship of the Indian National Academy of Engineering in 2021. She was also awarded the Distinguished Scientist award by TCS in 2012.
Lipika has a PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, where she had also done her graduation and post-graduation in Mathematics and Computer Science. As a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society engaged in the advancement of computing as a science and a profession, Lipika is actively involved in mentorship programs for PhD scholars and activities to promote Women in STEM.
Lipika Dey
Professor of Computer Science, Ashoka University
Shagata Mukherjee is the Lead – Behavioural Insights Unit of India, NITI Aayog, and a Deputy Director at the Centre for Social and Behavioural Change at Ashoka University.
Prior to this position, Shagata was an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Meghnad Desai Academy of Economics. He was also a Visiting Fellow at the Mumbai School of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Mumbai and an Affiliated Faculty at the Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) Nuffield -FLAME.
He is the recipient of the Vernon L. Smith Young Talent Award in Experimental Finance for his research on gender and microfinance and is a co-founder of the Mumbai Behavioural Network.
Dr. Shagata Mukherjee
Deputy Director (Policy), CSBC