Jal Jeevan Mission Chair Professor
Professor Gopal Naik is the JJM Chair Professor at IIMB. He is also the Senior Fellow at the Centre for Public Policy at IIMB. Prof. Gopal Naik’s research focuses on agricultural and environmental economics, rural development, and technology adoption. He is the recipient of the Dr. D.K. Desai Award and the American Agricultural Economics Association Award. He has held consultancy positions in national and international organisations and has contributed significantly to government committees and policymaking. He also spearheaded the Unnat Bharath Abhiyan, and led the development of SAMIE, a tele-education project recognized with the WSIS 2015 Award.
A chemical engineer and ecological economist, Dr Deepak Malghan is recognized for his work at the interface of scale theory and thermodynamics in ecological economics. His research focuses on the proportional relationship between the economy and the ecosystem, earning him accolades such as the 2015 VKRV Rao Prize in Social Sciences and the 2023 T N Khoshoo Memorial Award. Serving as an editor at Ecological Economics from 2018 to 2023, Dr Malghan has contributed to the field’s advancement. His affiliations with the Stockholm Environment Institute and his research on urban hydrology underscore his commitment to translational ecological economics. His lab at IIMB pioneers methods for analysing ethnic inequality and stratification, applying interdisciplinary tools to study ethnic politics and environmental injustice. of efficiency.
Dr Aditya Shrinivas specializes in development economics. His research focuses on food security, health, and nutrition outcomes. He has a Ph.D. in Applied Economics from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.
Consultant
M Rajendra was Administrative Officer at IIMB and was superannuated in 2020.
Research Officer
Shruthi Menon is a Development Economics researcher. She has experience working in academic, private and think tanks. Her research areas include International trade, Development policies and Political economy. She is currently pursuing PhD in Development Studies from Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore
Consultant
Dr. Niraj U Joshi is a Senior Consultant at IIMB under the JJM-UNICEF-IIMB partnership. His research focuses on the sustainability of Rural Drinking water schemes implemented under the Jal Jeevan Mission especially operation and Maintenance of these schemes by the rural communities. Dr Joshi has served as head of Research and education with two flagship organizations of the Aga Khan Development Network in India and Mozambique and as Senior Research Affiliate with the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Stockholm, Sweden. He is the recipient of the Prince Bernhard Scholarship for Nature conservation from WWF International, Switzerland. He has held consultancy positions in national and international organisations and has contributed significantly to policymaking in the environment and development sectors.
Post Doctoral Researcher
Prem Shankar Mishra has a Ph.D. in Development Studies from the Institute of Social and Economic Change (ISEC), Bangalore. He holds dual master’s in Population Studies and Geography from IIPS, Mumbai and BHU, Varanasi, respectively. His areas of research interest are population, environment and development issues, health economics, public health and system research, WASH, and MCH and nutrition.
Senior Research Associate
Prerona Sengupta is a senior researcher. She has an MSc in Behavioural and Economic Science from the University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests include monitoring and evaluating interventions, designing effective interventions based on behavioural insights for effective implementation of policies, water economics and management, WASH, reducing gender disparity in pay and opportunities, and reducing prejudice and stigma associated with gender roles.
Technical Assistant
He holds a master’s in environmental sciences from Madurai Kamaraj University, and a Post Graduate Diploma in Environmental Law and Policy from National Law University and WWF, India. He has worked at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, and Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in positions aligned with SDG6. His research interests include environmental monitoring and management, SDGs, water policy, security and governance, and renewable energy technologies. He is trained in Laboratory Quality Management System and Internal Audit as per IS/ISO/IEC 17025:2017.
Technical Assistant
Esha Chakraborty is an IISc Bangalore certified data scientist with a specialized expertise in Geographic Information Systems. She completed her MTech. in Geomatics Engineering from IIT (ISM), Dhanbad. Her focus areas are data analysis, data visualization and gaining actionable insights from data.
Junior Research Associate
Ajith Suresh Kumar is a Junior Research Associate at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore with the Jal Jeevan Mission team. He completed his BS-MS Dual Degree in Economics from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal. He has experience working as a junior research fellow (project) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Patna. His research interests lie in the intersection of machine learning and economics.
Junior Research Associate
Sangram is a post-graduate in economics from the University of Leeds focusing on ecological economics and industrial ecology. His research interests comprise the economics of climate change adaptation and mitigation, ecological footprint and economic growth, material flow analysis, industrial symbiosis and urban sustainability. He is also passionate about resource efficiency and environmental justice, aiming to bridge the gap between economics, environmental science, and social sciences through interdisciplinary research.