Social entrepreneurs in India are tackling three complex and critical social challenges: air quality, water resilience, and clean energy access. Join the Keller Center and the Chadha Center for Global India for a panel discussion with environmental entrepreneurs working towards a solution to these issues.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Parama Roy is the Lead Researcher at Okapi Research & Advisory. Parama is interested in the multifaceted and complex nature of urbanization process and its social and environmental implications. Her work is motivated by principles of socio-environmental justice and sustainable development and guided by political-economic/political-ecological theories, and mixed research methodologies. Parama completed her PhD from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has worked at Georgia State University (USA) and University of Copenhagen (Denmark).
She has published widely in international peer reviewed journals like Urban Affairs Review, City, and Geoforum on topics of collaborative planning and community gardening as urban planning strategies. Recently, she headed Okapi’s work to develop the Chennai Resilience Strategy supported by Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program. This work involved comprehensive research and broad stakeholder engagement across Chennai to identify city’s vulnerabilities specifically in the areas of Water, Disaster, Governance, Vulnerable Communities, and Urbanization.
Ronak Sutaria is the Founder and CEO of Mumbai-based start-up Respirer Living Sciences. In December 2015, Ronak was amongst the earliest technology researchers to build and deploy the first ever low-cost air quality sensor network across the country. His company specializes in IoT and Big Data powered technologies for urban and rural data-driven policy research. Ronak collaborated with India’s foremost research organizations including IIT Kanpur, Microsoft Research India and Shakti Sustainable Energy Foundation, in an effort to bring unparalleled scientific rigor to his work. These partnerships remain steadfast, resulting in the building and scaling of India’s first scientifically calibrated, low-cost IoT sensor-based AQ monitoring network.
Today, Ronak is one of the foremost experts on micro-particle sensor technology and is a prominent industry voice on affordable, scalable AQ monitoring in India. The work has also been instrumental to bringing together air quality researchers, IoT and Big Data technologists, public health practitioners and UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) policy researchers, to explore the potential of this technology to solve one of the most pressing climate issues of our time.
Sandeep Patel is the founder and CEO of Nepra, a zero waste to landfill company that creates a value chain for dry waste by connecting stakeholders in a transparent, scalable and technologically innovative way that benefits the bottom of the pyramid and promotes a Circular Economy. Sandeep is a member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Environment Committee, PlastIndia National Recycling committee and Swacch Bharat Mission – Gujarat. He holds a Bachelor’s In Business Administration (BBA), and an MBA in E-Commerce Strategy and Project Management from LEEDS Beckett University, UK.
Who can attend?
Open to students, postdocs, research scholars, faculty, staff, and alumni.