Faculty

Ms Sophia Lonappan is a National Programme Officer (NPO) for Public Health and Risk Communication for WHO in India. Prior to that she worked as Senior Communication and Media Relations Officer for WHO Country Office. In her current position in WHO country office, she is responsible for conceptualizing, designing and implementing WHO’s Risk Communication and Community Engagement strategies within the Health Emergency Programme for COVID-19, Influenza, floods etc including capacity building of stakeholders at national/sub national levels on use of appropriate mechanisms and channels of communication for engaging communities. Sophia’s past experience also includes being subject advisor for various documentary films for creating awareness on public health. Sophia has close to 15 years of work experience in communications and advocacy and has worked with national and international organizations, such as Global Health Strategies (GHS), The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and India HIV/AIDS Alliance.

Mirza Shadan has over six years of experience working on public health and science communications, advocacy, health financing and public policy. Currently, Shadan supports strategic communications and capacity building for India’s apex health research institution, the Indian Council of Medical Research. In GHS, Shadan has worked on various projects, including developing strategies for improving access to health technologies in developing countries, assessing the landscape for introducing new childhood vaccines, facilitating international events on gender & science and identifying financing gaps for public health issues in India such as nutrition. He has a degree in Economics from Ramjas College, University of Delhi.

Dr. Indira Behara Tankha is a Vice President at Global Health Strategies and oversees projects on infectious diseases and reproductive health. Indira has worked closely with the Indian national TB Program and its partners for many years, leading efforts to build awareness across diverse groups of stakeholders, engage champions, and create and scale up the TB Harega Desh Jeetega campaign across the country. She has also worked on areas such as neglected tropical diseases, antimicrobial resistance, as well innovation, and representation in healthcare. Her expertise lies in strategic planning and designing health systems strengthening solutions. Indira is a trained physician with a Master’s degree in Public Health from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York, with experience in clinical medicine as well as public health policy research.

Bikram Bindra is a marketing and communications specialist who has worked across the marketing, media, research and advertising industries for the past 14 years. Currently, Vice-President- Strategic Planning at McCann Worldgroup, he manages a cluster of clients across the food and health category.
Prior to this, Bikram was leading the Planning function at the Grey group in Delhi (part of WPP) and was the strategic leader for all GSK businesses that Grey works on (Sensodyne, Crocin, Otrivin and Eno) for the ISC region.
With a specific focus on interrogating larger cultural shifts and their implications on brands, Bikram has worked on a project to study our evolving relationship with food for a sensitivity toothpaste, looked at our changing notions around protection for a health brand and mapped the new luxury narrative in India for a car maker.
He has also worked with the Discovery Networks Asia Pacific where he led marketing initiativesacross the network portfolio in India, and as a brand manager on Horlicks and Boost- working on campaign management, creative development and consumer insights. His advertising work spans across categories and clients including Pepsi, Taco Bell, HT, Coca Cola, Pernod Ricard, Quaker Oats and Aircel.

A business leader with over 20 years-experience counselling clients on Corporate Strategy, Brand Marketing, Stakeholder Engagement, Policy Advocacy, and Corporate Communications. Currently he is the Managing Partner at Gnothi Seauton, a communications lab, focussed on purposeful storytelling.
He has managed clients across industries like Google, HP, Microsoft, Amazon, Oracle, Infosys, Adobe, Johnson & Johnson, Omidyar Network, Ministry of External Affairs, World Bank, UNICEF, among others. He has also worked with multi-lateral organizations, impact investors, foundations, NGOs, social enterprises, government projects and the agriculture sector focussed on designing and delivering behaviour change campaigns.
Working across India, Japan and the United States, he has led compelling campaigns in the space of reputation management, public health, global branding, social impact, public policy, sustainability, influencer engagement, digital communications, and crisis management. He employs innovative strategic-thinking skills with the ability to solve problems and make decisions in a fast-paced environment quickly and effectively.

Dr. Pati has been serving as the Director of ICMR’s Regional institute at Bhubaneswar since 2016. Her research focuses mainly on chronic disease prevention, management, and health promotion in
primary care. She has received several awards and recognitions for her work, including the Welcome Trust International Engagement Award, the Devi Award, the Samanta Chandra Sekhar Award, and the APACT Young Investigator Award. She is a renowned public health expert from India, who completed her MBBS and MD from MKCG Medical College in Odisha, India. She also pursued a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Maastricht in Netherlands through a Joint Japan/World Bank Graduate Scholarship (JJWBGS) and received an American Association of University Women (AAUW) International Fellowship for research into bio-social correlates of maternal mortality. Dr. Pati is a fellow of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and International College of Nutrition (ICN) and a Senior Lown visiting fellow of Harvard School of Public Health. She has published over 175 scientific papers in prestigious journals like The Lancet, PLoS One, Cancer causes and control, Obesity Reviews, and BMJ Open. She also developed a smoking cessation program for medical students that won her the APACT Young Investigator Award in 2007.

Dr. Lokesh Kumar Sharma is presently working as Scientist-E at Division of Biomedical Informatics, Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi. Dr. Sharma completed his Master of Technology (Computer Science & Engineering) and Ph. D. (Computer Science). Dr Sharma was also awarded DAAD Fellowship from DAAD Germany for his research work. Dr. Sharma has more than 20 years of research and academic experience in the application of machine learning, artificial intelligence, data mining and data management in health research.

Dr. Sharma is program officer for e-Project Management System of Indian Council of Medical Research and Department Health Research. Standard Treatment Workflows etc. His responsibility also includes management and analysis of COVID-19 database and other health research projects database and web portals.

He has published 50 papers in peer-reviewed International Journals, 25 papers in international and national conference proceedings on Machine Learning, Data Mining, Occupational Health, COVID-19 etc. Dr. Sharma is member of research degree committee in various universities. Dr Sharma also offers lectures in different workshop and UGC refresher courses. He has conducted several workshops and seminars for the researchers. Seven scholars have been awarded Ph. D. under his guidance and three scholars are pursuing Ph. D. under his guidance.

Dr. Enna Dogra Gupta is currently a scientist at Indian Council of Medical Research. Prior to joining the ICMR, she was research associate at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (New Delhi, India), where her research focused on the malaria vaccines and pathogen –host interactions. At ICMR, she is involved in the area of health policy and communications. She is actively involved in translation of evidence to policy that includes capacity building and transforming research documents into policy briefs for the policy makers. As part of the ICMR communications unit, she has organised several media communication and crisis communication workshops for ICMR directors and scientists, health research conclave for health researchers and many more. She is a part of COVID response team at ICMR and has been instrumental in developing risk communications and communicating research outcomes and advisories for mass dissemination, dispelling myths and fake news, creation of impactful written and visual content for the uptake by public stakeholders. She has published her research in several national and international peer-reviewed journals and also written popular articles.

Kaushik Bose is Vice President at the GHS India office and is responsible for strategizing and supporting the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) in strengthening the disease outbreak preparedness capacities of research institutes in the country. He also leads the project supporting ICMR’s Communications Unit to enhance the media presence of the Council and its Institutes across India.

Prior to working with GHS, Kaushik managed the communications and advocacy efforts for multiple projects at PATH India and worked extensively on immunisation and rotavirus projects. Kaushik has over 18 years of experience in strategic brand building through advertising, media relations, internal communications and other external communications. He has been associated with large corporate houses in the past, managing their corporate communications, brand communications and sustainability initiatives.

He has worked with International AIDS Vaccine Initiative during the preparatory phase of the clinical studies in India for AIDS vaccine. With a Masters in Business Administration, Kaushik has also previously worked for several international brands like Coca-Cola, Philips, Merck Sharpe and Dohme, Aventis Pasteur, Pfizer India Ltd, Becton Dickinson, Reckitt Benckiser.

Prof. Ruchi Tewari, is a full-time faculty at MICA and an academician for over two decades. Her professional activities includes teaching, research, training and consulting in the domain of strategic communication and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Dr Tewari has over 1500 hours of training experience in the strategic and human communication. Her clients include Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Indian Railways, BSNL, The Adani Foundation, Intas Pharmaceuticals Ltd., Wagh Bakri, Upgrad Education Private Limited and Tata Consulting Services (TCS). She has been a communication management consultant across industries ranging from logistics, real-estate, information technology to human resource management. She is an advisory board member of two start-ups and an independent director of a textile firm in Mumbai.

Dr Tewari is regularly invited to talk at various international forums like IAMCR, AMIC, AMA, etc. She has published academic and practice articles in leading international research journals and newspapers in India. She’s been awarded for her work by Amity International and Education and Communication Unit of the Department of Science, Government of India. Away from her professional life Ruchi is an avid yoga practitioner, enjoys acrylic and oil painting on canvass and is a student of Kathak.

Sushama serves as an advisor to CDMC, MICA and a consultant for Sustainability and CSR for selected companies of Adani Group since January 2020.  She spearheaded Adani Foundation as a Director, Strategy & Sustainability at Adani Foundation, Ahmedabad from November 2014 till December 2019. She was also the CEO of Adani Foundation from May 2007 to October 2014 and has played a pivotal role in shaping the CSR for Adani conglomerate for more than thirteen years.

During her four decades long experience in the social sector in India and USA, Ms. Oza has strategized and spearheaded projects in sectors of education, health care, disability, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, sustainable livelihood development and community infrastructure. Before retirement she was directing two centre of excellence projects Swachhagraha and SuPoshan which were being implemented nationwide. She has been and continues to support ESG/ Sustainability efforts and reporting as part of Sustainability leadership committees for Adani Group of companies and now consulting for the same. She is also on the board of various companies as an independent director. She serves as a board member and vice chairperson, United Way of Ahmedabad. She is also an active member of an Environment committee of FICCI and a Water Committee of CII Triveni.

In the span of her long career, she has groomed a large number of development professionals as well as volunteers. She has designed, planned and implemented many innovative projects successfully for the vulnerable groups and communities. In her current assignment with CDMC, MICA she has played a key role in capacity building of more than 500 social sector professions. She has an impressive record of successfully organizing many large-scale events for fund raising, networking and of developing multi-sectoral partnerships. She has represented the organizations at many national and international fora.

Ms. Oza received Masters in Social Work (MSW) from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in 1981 and has accreditation with the National Council of Social Work, U.S.A. and Education Evaluation International, U.S.A.

Prof. Manisha has a Ph.D. in Mass Communication with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA and in Education from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, India. She has shared her research globally as invited speaker and author. In her long career she has consulted with and led training programs for national and international organisations of repute such as UNESCO, UNICEF, the Internet Governance Forum, the World Bank, Indian Council of Medical Research, the National Task Force for Vaccine Confidence, Gujarat Energy Development Agency, Centre for Environment Education, SEWA, The Adani Foundation and the Adani Group, eGov Foundation, Mahila Samakhya, and The United Way of Baroda on gender and POSH, information management, strategic communication, social change, health communication and media and information literacy. As Chair, CDMC Prof. Manisha has spearheaded a capacity building initiative to train social sector professionals in strategic communication for social impact and partnership building. Awards and fellowships include The Soviet Land Nehru Award, Shastri Indo-Canadian Faculty Research Award, The Salzburg Seminar Fellowship, TATA Fellowship for the Study of Contemporary India, MICA AGK Award for meritorious service, and the lifetime achievement award for contribution to media and communication education by the Global Media Education Council.

Dr. Shailendra Raj Mehta is currently the President and Director and Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at MICA, in Ahmedabad, India. Earlier, he headed Auro University and Ahmedabad University. Before that, he had stints at Duke CE and the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (joint appointment), and Purdue University, where he taught Economics and Strategic Management.
He has done extensive research in Entrepreneurship, Industrial Organization, Information Economics, and Experimental Economics. His research has been the subject of a full-length review by the Economist.

His work on creating world-class universities has been discussed around the world and profiled in multiple languages. He is rated as one of the top researchers in the field of strategy in India. His BA and MA are from Delhi University (St. Stephen’s College and Delhi School of Economics respectively), his MPhil is from Balliol College, Oxford, and his Ph.D. is from Harvard.

Dr. Arbind Sinha is well-known in the field of communication for development with special expertise in the health sector and disaster communication strategies. He integrates his understanding of anthropology and communication methods in his approach towards development management and communication. He has more than 40 years of varied experience as communications expert at the Space Applications Centre at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization); the Royal Danish Embassy, New Delhi as its communications advisor and with TALEEM Research Foundation as a professor. He has held senior positions at MICA where his association has spanned many years from 2002 to 2015 and in 2017 he has re-joined MICA. His book on ‘Mass Media and Rural Development’ and his concept paper on ‘Human Channel of Communication’ have received worldwide recognition.

Dr. Sheela Godbole is an experienced clinician-researcher, a leader and communicator with strong technical, grant-writing, project management-implementation and administrative skills. She has successfully written, received and implemented many national and internationally funded extramural research grants and currently manages large project budgets and leads collaborations with multiple partner institutes in India (ICMR and non-ICMR).

For over two decades she has led clinical-epidemiological studies in HIV, STI’s, HPV, HIV& Cancer, Clinical Trials for HIV prevention and treatment (antiretrovirals) and most recently COVID 19. She contributed to ICMR’s research response to the COVID crisis, by setting up the Solidarity Trial Network in India for COVID treatment and also led the implementation of one of the ICMR supported Phase 2/3 trials for a vaccine against SARS-COV2 which has just received emergency authorization in India.

Dr. SubbaRao M Gavaravarapu has a PhD in Health Communication from University of Hyderabad. He was an ICMR International fellow at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore USA in 2013 and an international invitee in the Summer School of Risk Communication at Technology University of Dresden, Germany in 2016 and International Union of Nutrition Sciences (IUNS) Workshop on Capacity and Leadership building in Nutrition Sciences in National Institute of Nutrition and Health, Tokyo, Japan.

Working in the broad area of health communication, he ventured into the largely unchartered territory of nutrition communication. His specific research interests are in health, nutrition and food safety communication with special emphasis on social, behavioral and cultural aspects of communicative processes. His research and practice transcend the traditional extension work and integrate translational communication science with community-based approaches. His research and advocacy have been multi-faceted engaging in awareness creation, behaviour change, vendor education, policy advocacy, media engagement and consumer behaviour. He firmly believes that nutrition and health communication can bring about sustainable behaviour change only if individual, interpersonal, community and policy level changes are achieved. Therefore, his latest research has been covering wide-ranging arenas including contextual factors shaping food environments; food labelling; front-of-pack labels; information and communication technologies (ICTs) vis-à-vis diet/nutrition behaviours; social media and food behaviours; and infodemiology. HE has over 75 research publications, 12 book chapters, 3 edited books to is credit.

He scripted and directed several educational films on nutrition and food safety alongside developing many communication material and authoring several popular articles in renowned newspapers/magazines. He conducted over 300 nutrition and health awareness programs for schoolchildren, women’s groups, industry, academics and other stakeholder groups. He co-ordinated the activities of the Secretariat of World Health Organization’s (WHO) Southeast Asia Nutrition Research-cum-Action Network of 11 member countries from 2004-2012 at NIN.

He teaches health communication in various regular and ad hoc training programmes of NIN and serves as a guest faculty for training programmes at various prestigious institutes and Universities. He has also drafted syllabi for several training programmes. He is a peer reviewer for several international journals and referee for PhD dissertations of national and international universities.
He chairs the Health Communication Working Group of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). He is on the editorial board of Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior since 2011; was Asian Editor for American Journal of Health Behavior from 2013-2020. He sits on expert committees of regulatory bodies like Food Safety Standards Authority of India (FSSAI), Bureau of Indian Standards, Codex Alimentarius Commission, and has been a part of technical and project advisory groups of several academic organizations.

He won the prestigious awards including VN Patwardhna Prize for excellence in Nutrition Research from ICMR in 2014, Mid-career Award from American Society for Nutrition in 2020, Platinum City Strategist Award from Foundation for Futuristic Cities, JN Bose Award from Indian Dietetic Association, Silver Author Recognition awards for 3 consecutive years from JNEB among several others. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) and the Royal Society of Public Health, UK.

Prior to joining NIN, he served in various capacities in TV, Press and Advertising.

Dr Rajni Kant currently is the Director of ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC), Gorakhpur and also Heads the Research Management, Policy, Planning and Biomedical Communication at Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), New Delhi. He has vast experience of more than 38 years in the area of biomedical research. He does research in Public Health, strategic planning and policy formulation with primary interests in malaria control strategies and vector bionomics particularly the community based bioenvironmental control of malaria with special inclination towards community engagement and inter-sectoral coordination for disease elimination.

His recent projects include the Research on Various aspects of COVID-19 including vaccine interchangeability study, clinic-epidemiological profile, psycho-social issues and COVID-19 and stigma. He has also worked on ‘Gandhi and Health@150’, ‘Strategic Plan-Agenda 2030, Research Performance Evaluation: Impact Analysis, enhancing awareness and outreach and improving visibility towards health improvement. He is also working in the area of History of Medicine. He also leads the ICMR communication unit for enhancing ICMR visibility, brand building and outreach. He is active member in various policy level committees of national importance like NITI Aayog’s Ranking & rating of S&T institutions in India, DST’s review committee of Centre for Policy research and Technology led Innovation Policy of Government of India and represent ICMR in committees of Principal Scientific Adviser to PM, Group of Secretaries and others.

He played instrumental role in bringing out important documents like ICMR Strategic Plan: Agenda 2030, ICMR Coffee Table Book “Touching Lives”, Animation Film on activities & achievements of ICMR, health chapter of XIIth plan of Govt of India, etc. He has coordinated important activities of ICMR Performance Evaluation by high level committees as well as through Clarivate Analytics. His work on “Gandhi & Health @ 150” helped in bringing out a collectible edition of IJMR, which was released by His Holiness the Dalai Lama and received wider appreciation. This was further extended to a ‘Mission SHAKTTI’ program for Health awareness among school children. He has also been involved in carrying the trend analysis of resource investment in health with NITI Aayog and in review of autonomous bodies.

He also worked for a DST sponsored project on preparation of Global Malaria Database and Journal Directory and as Coordinator for the Digitization of century old Indian Journal of Medical Research since its inception (1913).

He is the member of various scientific societies/academies such as Indian Society for Parasitology, Lucknow; Bioved Research Society, Allahabad; Vigyan Parishad, Allahabad; National Academy of Vector Borne Diseases, Bhubaneswar; Indian Science Congress Association; Kolkata, etc. He has received various awards and prizes including Young Scientist Award for outstanding work in the area of malaria research, NAVBD Award for Environmental Aspects, best poster award, etc. He has delivered many lectures in the area of malaria and mosquito control, medical & technical writing, biomedical communication and conducted workshops on Policy Brief writing, predatory journals and health communication, etc. He has also chaired technical sessions in various scientific meetings/programs as well as reviewed research papers/projects/synopsis and attended selection, screening committees and examined/guided PhD and M.Phil students. He has published more than 100 research papers, popular articles, scientific abstracts, policy documents, letter to editors, correspondences, etc. He was instrumental in setting up ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre (RMRC), Gorakhpur as well as ICMR Field Station in Keylong a remote and inaccessible area in Lahaul & Spiti district of Himachal Pradesh.

Dr Saritha Nair currently heads the Policy and Communications Division at ICMR. Dr Nair is a social scientist and has more than two decades of experience in conducting mixed methods research on cross cutting issues of maternal and child health including gender-based violence, use of smokeless tobacco and strengthening cause of death statistics. She has authored/co-authored more than 70 peer-reviewed articles focused on these issues.