Academic Leadership

Dr. KALPANA BALAKRISHNAN

Dean (Research)

Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan is a senior global health researcher in the areas of occupational and environmental health. She acquired her undergraduate education at the AIIMS, New Delhi, India and subsequently her doctoral and post-doctoral training at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, USA. She has served SRIHER for more than 3 decades, spearheading the creation of several centers of research excellence including, the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Occupational and Environmental Health and the ICMR Centre for Advanced Research on Air Quality, Climate and Health. Dr. Balakrishnan is globally acclaimed for her contributions on developing novel exposure assessment approaches to characterize the complex multi-media exposures experienced by rural and urban populations in low and middle- income countries. Her primary research involvement has been in the area of health effects of household and ambient air pollution and workplace chemical risk assessment. She is currently engaged in research and training collaborations with a network of more than 50 national and international institutional partners to address national and global health research priorities.

Dr. Balakrishnan has also spearheaded efforts to develop novel academic programs at SRIHER, with support from the NIH Fogarty International Center and the Center for International Migration, GIZ. She has led a long- standing collaboration with UC Berkeley that has been instrumental in developing the Masters programs in Industrial Hygiene and Safety and the MPH program in Occupational and Environmental Health as well as Climate Change and Human Health.

Dr. Balakrishnan has contributed as a technical expert for many international reports including The World Health Organisation Air Quality Guidelines, The IARC Monographs and The Global Energy Assessment, to name a few. She also serves in multiple national and global technical review committees for addressing Climate, Health and Energy risks in developing countries. She is a recipient of many recognitions including the the Clarivate India Research Excellence Citation award (2021) and The Hari Om Ashram Trust Award (2000) for Outstanding Scientist administered by the University Grants Commission, Govt. of India. She is also a distinguished fellow of the National Academy of Medical Sciences

Dr. S. Sankar works as Professor and Head at the Department of Environmental Health Engineering, Sri Ramachandra Faculty of Public Health, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER). He has done post-graduation in Environmental Toxicology from the University of Madras and completed PhD in Environmental Health from SRIHER. He works with a dynamic and multi-disciplinary team at a place that serves as a WHO Collaborating Centre for Occupational and Environmental Health and Centre for Advanced Research in Air Quality, Climate and Health for the Indian Council of Medical Research, Govt. of India for the past 27 years. As a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, he acquired training in areas concerning occupational and environmental health. Through this capacity building, he had a significant role in developing the curriculum and introducing new specializations for the Master of Public Health (Occupational and Environmental Health, Public Health Nutrition, Health Systems Management, Climate Change and Human Health) and innovative programs such as MSc. Industrial Hygienen and Safety, BSc. (Hons) Environmental Health Sciences and Environmental Sciences elective course at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research. He had served as an approved tutor/trainer by the British Occupational Health Society and The National Examination Board in Occupational Safety and Health (NEBOSH) UK, for nearly six years.

He served to the World Health Organization in various capacities as a consultant, temporary advisor, and technical expert on special assignments concerning occupational and environmental health training and health risk assessment activities in several South East Asian countries. In addition, he has completed over 100 industrial hygiene and occupational health assessments in various types of industries. Over the last 27 years of his service at SRIHER, he was involved in conducting over 50 short-term training programs concerning occupational and environmental health in India, especially for industry health & safety professionals and environmental health researchers.

He has designed and conducted numerous large-scale exposure assessment studies and also was responsible for the selection, validation, and deployment of a wide range of air sampling equipment in the field and also developing and standardizing field protocols for sampling air pollutants, analysis of air toxics and biomarkers . He was involved as Principal Co-Investigator in the first environmental health cohort study in India examining exposure-response relationships between particulate matter exposures and health effects among pregnant women, infants, and adults in Tamil Nadu funded by the Indian Council of Medical Research, Govt. of India. He has been involved in a large-scale cohort that examined exposure-response relationships between particulate matter exposures and health effects among pregnant women, infants, and adults in a multi-country LPG intervention trial funded by NIH, USA in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In various capacities as Co-Investigator, Principal Co-Investigator, and Principal Investigator, he has been involved in conducting more than 40 interdisciplinary research projects funded by national and international agencies. He has more than 100 research publications to his credit. Presently he serves as a reviewer in over ten national and international journals. He had successfully served as a member of the State Expert Appraisal Committee, Department of Environment, Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change, Govt. of India. As an expert committee member, he was also involved in special assignments of the National Green Tribunal and Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board. He has initiated efforts to strengthen the green initiatives at SRIHER. He has taken an active role in several Institutes’ administration, academics, and hospital committees concerning quality and safety.

Dr. S. SANKAR

Professor and Head

Dr. KRISHNENDU MUKHOPADHYAY

Professor

Dr. Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay [MSc, PhD (Nucl. & Analytical Chem], a Professor in the EHE-SRFPH, SRIHER has more than 25 years of teaching and research experience and has number of national or international affiliations such as – WHO consultant for the BPH curriculum design at RIHS, Bhutan; approved faculty member / councillor for NEBOSH (UK) and IGNOU (INDIA) etc. Under the University of Burdwan (WB), he conducted his doctoral research SINP-VECC (Kolkata) and BARC-TIFR (Mumbai) followed by the work as a Project Scientist & RA in WBPCB-IWMED and in ROHC (E), ICMR, (Govt. of India), Kolkata, respectively.

He has research training in NIOH (Johannesburg, South Africa); University of Brescia (Italy), UCB (USA), JSI, Ljubljana, Slovenia etc. As the National Coordinator / Temporary Advisor he served in WHO-UNEP Mercury – Biomonitoring study in India related to the Minamata Convention and presented the results in Italy and Switzerland (UN office at Geneva).

He has been a WHO Panelist of the Roundtable Discussion in the International Science Congress at Bangkok, Thailand in 2016. His domains of recent research are Household Air Pollution and Health Effects, Environmental Health, Exposure Assessment & Climate Change, Household Ventilation, Industrial Hygiene etc. He supervised 4 PhD and 1 Post-doc (ICMR) candidates and has more than 110 publications in the journals of repute, national / international conferences, and book chapters in his credit thus far. He worked in 15 National and International projects as PI or Co-PI, guided 65 UG and PG dissertations, too.

Dr. Vidhya Venugopal M.Sc, Ph.D., A Professor of Occupational and Environmental Health at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER), Chennai, and serves as Country Director for the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Global Health Research Centre on Non-Communicable Diseases in Employment Conditions. With over 24 years of experience, Dr. Venugopal is an internationally recognized authority on occupational heat stress and worker health. A Certified Industrial Hygienist from the British Occupational Hygiene Society (BOHS, UK), she serves as an approved International Tutor for both BOHS and NEBOSH (UK). She has mentored students for over 16 years, and her training extends beyond academic settings to include industrial hygiene training for industries and aspiring industrial hygienists, building capacity across the occupational health sector.

As a Consultant Occupational Hygienist, she has partnered with more than 108 industries across India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, implementing exposure monitoring programs and workplace interventions that have enhanced worker safety and productivity. Her consultancy work has driven the adoption of the Heat Stress Prevention Guide across 350+ industries, demonstrating significant scalable impact.

Dr. Venugopal has led several research projects, authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications, and presented her work at international conferences globally. She currently serves as Chair of the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) Scientific Committee on Thermal Factors (2024–2027). In recognition of her exceptional contributions, she has been inducted as a Fellow of the Collegium Ramazzini, becoming the first Indian non-medical scientist to receive this prestigious honor.

Dr. VIDHYA VENUGOPAL

Professor