Three Talks on Individual Differences in the Brain and Behavior

Sridhar Venkatesh

Head, Schools for Strong Minds

Sridhar Venkatesh leads Sapien Labs Schools for Strong Minds Program and advises on the data and analytics platform that powers its global data acquisition.

Sridhar brings vast experience across the data and technology sectors along with a deep interest in mind health and mental wellbeing. His career focus has been in product management where he has successfully brought products to market in spaces including data infrastructure, AI/ML, wireless and telecom, and enterprise security. He founded two startups and led product and business teams at three others, giving him deep experience in building products and businesses from scratch. Outside of work, Sridhar is a long-distance runner and ocean swimmer. He served on the board of the American International School in Chennai for 8 years, developing a strong interest in K-12 education.

Sridhar holds a BS and MS in electrical engineering from MIT and is currently working on a PhD in Psychology from the California Institute for Human Sciences.

“When I first heard about Sapien Labs, I was incredibly impressed – both by the amazing team as well as the magnitude of the challenge. There are so many organizations focused on mental health, but Sapien Labs’ approach goes to the heart of the problem, understanding root causes and working on prevention. The other aspect I love is that at its core, Sapien Labs is a research organization. We care deeply about the science and using the findings to make an impact. I feel so grateful to be a part of this team, and hopefully our work helps millions today and in future generations.”

David Blanchflower

Fellow, Adviser

David Blanchflower is the Bruce V. Rauner Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College. His areas of research include unemployment, labour economics and well-being. He has published extensively on happiness and the relationship between the economy, social factors and wellbeing. His recent work has been on the declining mental health of the young.

He was previously member of the Monetary Policy Committee, Bank of England, and was honored as a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for ‘services to the Monetary Policy Committee and economics’. He is a part-time professor at the University of Glasgow, UK and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is currently an advisor to the Human Development Report Office at the United Nations.

“As a researcher who has been interested in wellbeing and the relationship to the economy I have worked with numerous national and global survey datasets over my career. The Global Mind data has a scale, breadth and timeliness that has not been available before and is one of the richest and topical datasets I have worked with. I am excited by its enormous potential as a resource for researchers around the world to examine many of the questions I have grappled with over the years. It helps us understand how the world is now.”

Sr. John-Mary Vianney

Dr. Sr. John-Mary Vianney

Director, Sapien Labs Center for Research of Brain and Mind at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology

Dr. Sr. John-Mary Vianney is Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Health and Biomedical Sciences at the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST). One of only a few Neuroscientists in East Africa, Dr. Vianney has dedicated her career to investigating neurodegenerative diseases and brain atrophy and factors that contribute to neuronal maintenance and regeneration. She is also passionate about teaching and has taught courses in Neurobiology, One Health, and Global Health. She has also been an active member of multiple academic and professional societies, including the Society for Neuroscience and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Sr John-Mary holds a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences with a specialization in Neurosciences from Western Michigan University. She is also a Catholic nun affiliated with the Sisters of Saint Therese of the Child Jesus (Theresian Sisters) based in Bukoba, Tanzania.

It has been my passion to try to understand what factors positively contribute to neuronal maintenance and regeneration, and vice versa. The mission and approach of Sapien Labs in performing a large-scale study on brain and mental wellbeing across continents will continue to reveal much about the brain interactions to its surroundings. I am excited to be a bridge between the Center for Research of Brain and Mind (CEREBRAM) at NM-AIST and Sapien Labs, as we collaborate to promote wellbeing in Tanzania and across the globe.

Jennifer Newson

Jennifer Newson, Ph.D.

Lead Scientist, Cognitive and Mental Health

Jennifer came to Sapien Labs out of a curiosity for the workings of the human mind and a desire to blend academic research with real world impact. At Sapien Labs she has spearheaded the development of the MHQ and the global roll-out of the Mental Health Million Project and continues to lead data exploration and the development of novel tools.

Her previous research has spanned multiple subfields of the brain including cognitive neuroscience, olfaction science, and mental health and wellbeing where she has worked on the relationship between attention and memory, scene reconstruction in memory and imagination using fMRI, and the translation of olfaction induced insights using EEG and measures of emotional, physical and mental wellbeing into product design. Prior to Sapien Labs she was Head of Neuroscience Research at Givaudan and brings a broad perspective across academic, commercial and not-for profit organizations.

She has a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from Oxford University and a B.Sc. Hons in Neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh. She did her postdoctoral work at the Wellcome Center for Neuroimaging at the University College London.

“I’m interested in how scientific insights can be translated into tangible applications that have real-life benefit, and the opportunity to shape the future of brain health and mental health care, ultimately enabling people to receive care and support that is more tailored to their needs.

I love the “anything’s possible” perspective at Sapien Labs which helps us to navigate ambitious initiatives/projects and to seek solutions and opportunities that go beyond the status quo. I am also excited to be able to bring together my background across neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience and my experience in translating fundamental science into technologies in the commercial sector to build something useful for the field of mental health care.”

Maya Thiagarajan

Founder and Education Director, TREE

Maya brings to Sapien Labs a perspective on ways to integrate research insights into curriculum and policy in education for better learning and wellbeing.

Maya is currently the Founder and Education Director of TREE, an organization that develops, supports, and inspires teachers in India. She has previously taught in a wide range of high schools including public school in New Hampshire and inner-city Baltimore as part of Teach for America, and in private schools in New York City, Boston and most recently at UWC Singapore. She now serves on the Board of the Kodaikanal International School. She is the author of Beyond the Tiger Mom: East-West Parenting for the Global Age, and writes widely on parenting and education.

Maya has an MA in Education Policy from Harvard University and a BA in English from Middlebury College.

As an educator, I am fascinated by the differences in how people learn and navigate the world and how this is influenced by culture, methods of teaching and life experiences. Sapien Labs’ research in the area of mental and cognitive health brings new perspectives and understanding to this and can have far-reaching implications for educators and education systems across the globe.

Finding ways to enable better adolescent mental health and cognitive health in low-income communities for greater school success are also both particularly important challenges that I am excited to contribute to.

Robert Carter

Acting Executive Director and Board Member

As a Board Member at Sapien Labs Rob brings a perspective on team building and strategies to integrate research into consumer and healthcare products.

Rob is a senior executive at Avalere Health with deep healthcare relationships and a broad understanding of the behavioral health space including expert understanding of the models used by large companies and payers to address behavioral health. He has advised large private equity investors in the diligence and purchase of companies delivering substance abuse treatment; outpatient psychiatry, autism services and running inpatient care for eating and other disorders. Rob also has significant experience developing successful business models and acquiring early customers and partnerships for early-stage data/tech driven companies.

Rob has a Masters in Public and Private Management from the Yale University School of Management and a BA in Economics from Bucknell University.

As human beings we all struggle through our lifetimes to understand the elements that shape our mental trajectories and drive our emotions and decisions. Being part of Sapien Labs is, in this sense, a personal journey that has brought, and continues to bring, new perspectives to this understanding. What also captures my imagination though is the possibility of turning these insights and ideas into something real that can integrate tangibly into the world at scale to help millions of people better navigate their mental challenges. What are the mechanisms to get us there faster? What are models that can work? Solving these challenges in the context of a smart, committed team is what I find most interesting and rewarding.

Dr. Shailender Swaminathan

Director, Sapien Labs Centre for Human Brain and Mind at Krea University

Dr. Shailender Swaminathan is the Director of the Sapien Labs Centre for Human Brain and Mind at Krea University. His expertise lies in Health Economics and Policy and applied econometrics.

Shailender returned to India after two decades in the United States where he held diverse academic and research positions at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and Brown University’s Department of Health Policy. His work has spanned various domains of health policy including understanding the impact of health insurance expansions on utilization and health in both the United States and India. Most recently he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Sai University.

His present interests lie in bringing together cross-disciplinary perspectives to develop insights into brain and mind health that can be translated into impactful public policy and programs at large scale.

Shailender has a PhD in Economics from University of Southern California and is an adjunct faculty member in Brown University.

Mental health is crucial to the successful functioning of society. Yet there is only a limited understanding of how social, economic, and environmental factors determine mental health. The absence of high quality large-scale data is a huge constraint, especially in the context of low-and middle-income countries. What draws me to Sapien Labs is the focus on large-scale data that combines EEG recordings of the brain, self-reported mental health, and detailed information on the social, economic and environmental conditions under which individuals live with cross-disciplinary perspectives and rigorous analysis to help address questions of fundamental importance in the current, global context. I see this as a unique opportunity to understand the drivers of mental health and am eager to see how this work can be used to inform government policy.

Randy Winn

Board Member

As a Board Member at Sapien Labs Randall Winn brings a perspective on building data and analytics organizations across a wide range of end markets, including healthcare. Randall is the co-founder and Managing Partner at 22C, a private investment firm delivering equity capital, strategic guidance, tactical mentorship and targeted operational resources to data/information and business services companies. 22C’s operational and technology resources, including a 100+ person affiliated data science organization, deliver practical, real-world support to 22C’s management team and partners in their efforts to build companies that are leaders in their respective markets.

Randy was co-founder and long-time CEO of Capital IQ. He is a current board member of ZoomInfo, Aurora Energy Research, LMI, and Canoe Software. He was the former Chairman of Dealogic and was a former board member of Definitive Healthcare, Viteos Fund Services and Merit Software. Randy received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.

As a father of three kids, I have been deeply concerned by the degradation in mental health over the past years, particularly among teens. I had developed a series of hypotheses about the causes and the extent of the problems, but was lacking data to really understand it. Given my background and “day job” of building data and analytics businesses, the lack of data was deeply unsatisfying. After meeting Tara and team and seeing the work they have done, I wanted to join the effort to shine a light on the causes of this issue and bring my experience to try to make an impact.

Randy Winn

Board Member

As a Board Member at Sapien Labs Randall Winn brings a perspective on building data and analytics organizations across a wide range of end markets, including healthcare. Randall is the co-founder and Managing Partner at 22C, a private investment firm delivering equity capital, strategic guidance, tactical mentorship and targeted operational resources to data/information and business services companies. 22C’s operational and technology resources, including a 100+ person affiliated data science organization, deliver practical, real-world support to 22C’s management team and partners in their efforts to build companies that are leaders in their respective markets.

Randy was co-founder and long-time CEO of Capital IQ. He is a current board member of ZoomInfo, Aurora Energy Research, LMI, and Canoe Software. He was the former Chairman of Dealogic and was a former board member of Definitive Healthcare, Viteos Fund Services and Merit Software. Randy received his bachelor’s degree from Princeton University.

As a father of three kids, I have been deeply concerned by the degradation in mental health over the past years, particularly among teens. I had developed a series of hypotheses about the causes and the extent of the problems, but was lacking data to really understand it. Given my background and “day job” of building data and analytics businesses, the lack of data was deeply unsatisfying. After meeting Tara and team and seeing the work they have done, I wanted to join the effort to shine a light on the causes of this issue and bring my experience to try to make an impact.

Rahul Varma

Board Member

Rahul is a global Human Resources leader, speaker and thought leader whose career has been dedicated to helping people thrive at work and make a positive impact on businesses and society. He has led large, globally distributed workforces and complex organizational transformations. Most recently, Rahul was the Chief Talent Officer for Accenture Technology, leading HR for Accenture’s largest business that employs over 375,000 people. From India to Singapore to New York he has previously held various roles at Accenture including Global Head of Talent, Chief Learning Officer, Global Head of HR Strategy and Head of HR, India. During this journey, he crafted a new approach to leadership development, implemented an AI based solution to measuring skills, helped launch and integrate Accenture’s platform business, led the largest scale successful re-imagination of performance management in the world and created multiple innovations in digital learning and global learning centers. As the first HR Director in India, Rahul led through a phase of dramatic growth as Accenture grew from 200 people to almost 40,000 in seven years, now a Harvard Business School case study on hyper-growth in India. Rahul has also been a two-time recipient of the First-Place CLO Learning Elite Award.

Rahul has served on the boards of Covenant House International, a non-profit dedicated to eradicating youth homelessness and Madura Microfinance, which provided microloans across rural India.

Rahul holds a master’s degree in Human Resources from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management (Pune, India) and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from University of Delhi.

I have come to realize that we need to evolve our current systems and structures, within organizations and more broadly in society, for people to lead lives that are physically healthy, intellectually energizing, emotionally fulfilling, and fundamentally aligned to their individual purpose. I seek to create solutions for better ways to work and live by fusing the latest understanding from modern science with enduring wisdom. Sapien Labs is doing profoundly important work in bringing the richest and most comprehensive data to inform the state of human wellbeing around the world and its drivers that I believe can provide direction in fulfilling this goal.

Uttara Bharath

Senior Technical Advisor for Social and Behavior Change, Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs

Uttara brings a global public health perspective to Sapien Labs, particularly with respect to practical ways to deliver research insights in cognitive and mental health as effective public health communication.

For the last two decades, as part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs Uttara has lived and worked across Africa and Asia focused on the design and implementation of various public health communication programs addressing the behavioral, social and normative aspects of a range of health issues including HIV/AIDS and other infectious diseases, Maternal and Child Health, Suicide Prevention, Child Abuse, Early Childhood Development and more recently COVID-19. She is also the founder of Nalamdana, a non-profit for health communication in India, which she founded in 1993 as an echoing green fellow. She continues to serve on Nalamdana’s Board of Trustees providing technical guidance to its projects, research, and planning, as well as training and workshops.

Uttara holds an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and a BA in English from Wellesley College.

“Given my area of expertise in behavioural science, I am particularly interested in the social determinants of cognitive development – the enablers, inhibitors and barriers. Understanding these better will go a long way in strengthening caregiving and education strategies in early childhood, childhood and adolescence.”

Callyn Giese

Senior Manager, Marketing and Events

Callyn joined Sapien Labs in 2019 and manages marketing and events, including coordination of all virtual symposia which she has helped design and launch. She also supports the marketing outreach of the WorkforceMHQ product.

She has over 10 years of experience working in marketing and events and previously managed large trade shows and hosted events, including all aspects of event strategy, planning, execution, marketing and communication. One of her proudest achievements was the creation of a “Women in Analytics” panel at the annual client conference in her previous role at Applied Predictive Technologies, a Mastercard Company.

Callyn has an M.A. in English from George Mason University and a B.A. in English from James Madison University.

It is an honor to be part of an organization that has amazing ambitions – improving mental health on a global scale. It’s rewarding to be able to use marketing and events skills honed in the corporate world to support that mission. I’m also grateful to be part of a team that blends an academic background in neuroscience with an entrepreneurial spirit in a really cool and unique way.

Joseph Taylor

Head of Digital Marketing

Joe leads global digital outreach for Sapien Labs particularly enabling broad multi-language global outreach for the Mental Health Million Project and the MHQ products for Workforce and Universities.

Joe has broad experience in International marketing and media where he has previously led high value projects & large cross-disciplinary teams in digital marketing across multiple industries and Fortune 500 companies including Entertainment (20th Century Fox, Sony, YouTube), Technology (Google, Microsoft) and FMCG (Nestle, P&G, RB). He is certified across multiple digital marketing platforms.

He has also volunteered as a Teacher/Tutor with Breakthrough SF – a community program designed to support children from diverse and less-privileged backgrounds to have a path to a college education.

Joe has a B.A. in Law and M.Sc. in Money and Banking from the University of Birmingham, UK and a Diploma in French Law from Universite de Limoges, France.

It is highly rewarding to be working with an organization that is driving real change in our understanding of mental health and wellbeing. The Sapien Labs mission is fundamental to our collective future, and as a marketer, being able to contribute even a little is an incredible opportunity.

Having worked in marketing and communications for nearly 20 years, I’ve contributed to the growth of multiple companies, brands and products. My goal at Sapien Labs is to apply the techniques of reaching the right people with the right message, to an audience that is as large and diverse as the entire planet.

Narayan Subramaniyam, Ph.D.

Research Affiliate

Narayan’s focus at Sapien Labs is on developing novel analytical approaches to the EEG signal. He is also the primary author of the popular EEG methods articles on Lab Talk.

Narayan has a longstanding interest in complex systems, statistical signal processing, computational modeling and nonlinear time series analysis, with applications to functional neuroimaging data (EEG, MEG), including brain connectivity estimation. He has previously worked on quantifying structural properties of EEG data based on complex networks and nonlinear dynamics, with applications to derive EEG-based biomarkers for epilepsy.

Prior to his scientific study he worked as a software engineer at MindTree, India on end-to-end SAP implementations for businesses. His other interests include pedagogical tools for teachers in higher education.

Narayan has an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from the Tampere University of Technology, Finland and a B.E. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the BMS College of Engineering in Bangalore, India. He is also presently a researcher at Tampere University of Technology, Finland.

“I am passionate about solving problems at the intersection of mathematics and neuroscience. At Sapien labs, I get the amazing opportunity to challenge and test the fundamental assumptions made when applying mathematical methods to analyze and interpret EEG data.”

Olesia Topalo

Manager, Data Operations and Workflow

Olesia manages all of Sapien Labs’ backend data and technology processes, workflows and QA.

She has extensive experience in the design of workflows and in QA for software products. She is a Certified Test Manager with deep knowledge of manual and automation testing of software and has served as a project manager and QA Lead on various large software development projects with high pressure delivery schedules. She has knowledge of a wide range of software, testing and tracking tools and programming languages.

Olesia also speaks a number of languages including English, German, Russian, Ukranian and Polish and is a certified German to Ukranian translator.

She has both a Bachelor and Master’s Degree in Translation (German-Ukrainian) from the Foreign Languages Department at Lviv National University of Ivan Franko in Ukraine.

I am excited about working with Sapien Labs because I believe in the goals and mission of the organization. I feel that the research and work done by Sapien Labs can impact the world and help people understand the brain and improve our mental wellbeing. I am working with data operation and management activities and it’s really fascinating how much dependency we can find between our mental wellbeing and environmental factors.

Jerzy Bala, Ph.D.

Chief Data Scientist

Jerzy has a personal interest in brain health issues and joins Sapien Labs to apply his computational expertise to enable better brain health.

He brings deep perspective to solving complex data analytics problems. His wide breadth of expertise includes artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, healthcare analytics and probabilistic modeling that he has applied across diverse domains such financial fraud prevention and detection and risk management, next product to buy predictions and sensor analytics for ballistic target discrimination. He has served as Principal Investigator for research projects under the aegis of various government agencies including Defense Research Projects Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, Department of Education, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Jerzy has received ten Commonwealth of Virginia Outstanding Achievement Awards for success in the U.S. Department of Defense research projects.

He has conceived several patented machine learning algorithms, among them, distributed data and text mining methods, and a data analytics method geared towards the interactive acquisition and display of visual knowledge representations. He is also the co-author of the book, Machine Learning – A Multi strategy Approach. His postdoctoral research was sponsored through a grant from the National Science Foundation in Computational Science and Engineering to investigate a class of multi-strategy machine learning algorithms that combine explainable rule-based learning with neural networks.

He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from George Mason University, and a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland. He has held various roles in data science and analytics, most recently as Vice President, Analytics at Bottomline Technologies.

Sapien Labs is in a unique position of executing ongoing global data acquisition initiatives to builda rich and evolving collection of large-scale multidimensional data sets that include demographics with life experience, neurophysiological, and mental health information. As a data scientist, I understand the importance of such data as an asset that can fuel better understanding of the brain, leading to better tools for more accurate diagnoses and treatment of disorders.

I am most interested in solving complex knowledge and large-scale data analytics problems towards efforts to build proof-of-concept demonstrations and productization of analytical solutions.

Dhanya Parameshwaran, Ph.D.

Senior Scientist

Dhanya’s combined interest in solving socioeconomic challenges and understanding the brain led to the pioneering work behind the Human Brain Diversity Project where she continues to build deep insights into the EEG signal and its relationship to environment and human outcomes.

Dhanya has worked across various neural systems and species from rats to humans studying electrical activity of the brain from spiking activity in CA1 pyramidal neuronal networks to LFP, ECoGand EEG signals. She has a broad computational background with substantial experience in signal processing and machine learning, as well as extensive programming experience in MATLAB, R, and Python. Previously, as a Data Scientist for Madura Microfinance in India, she developed analytical models to predict the economic success of informal rural economies.

Dhanya is also co-Founder of Kabbadi Adda, an active organizer of the Kabbadi leagues in India.

Dhanya has a B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras in Aerospace Engineering and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS), TIFR in India.

The more we find out about the brain, the more uncharted the science seems. Often in neuroscience, we generalize our findings to humanity as a whole based on information from a few select individuals chosen for research. I am interested in the differences across individuals as opposed to the similarities. At Sapien Labs, I get an opportunity to look at large-scale data from India, US, Sudan, Argentina and beyond. Being able to connect the evolution of the brain to the evolution of man is a question I am fascinated by.

At Sapien Labs I am involved in building tools to analyze EEG data quickly and arrive at meaningful research outcomes. Simplifying EEG analysis and being able to build EEG tools that are deployed for everyone to use on a large scale, agnostic to the question, is something I am keen to contribute”.

Tara Thiagarajan, Ph.D.

Founder and Chief Scientist

Tara founded Sapien Labs as a way to bring together diverse disciplines and domains to build deep, holistic and global understanding of our evolving brain and mind that can impact our individual and societal health and wellbeing in practical and positive ways.

Over the last decades she has looked for insights into the nature of brain and mind across species and from multiple perspectives. From this multifaceted view she takes a complex systems perspective and is guided by two overarching insights: that the integrated system is far more than the sum of its parts, and that our changing environment is driving an evolving divergence of brain physiology among us with health and societal consequences that are more profound than we have appreciated.

Until March 2021, Tara also led Madura Microfinance building it from its founding into an organization with 3,000 people reaching into over 25,000 villages and small towns across India to provide small loans to over a million people each year. At Madura she pioneered data and analytical frameworks to enable insights into economic outcomes in these data dark ecosystems, and lived the unique challenges of building an organization that integrates across the full breadth of humanity from the very poorest, least educated and off-grid to the wealthy, educated and technology savvy. Altogether this has contributed to a global approach to science that is grounded in real-world challenges and implementation.

Tara has a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Stanford University, a B.A. in Mathematics from Brandeis University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Previously she was also a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the Section on Critical Brain Dynamics, a Visiting Scientist at the National Center for Biological Sciences in India and has worked in Strategic Scientific Planning at Bristol Myers-Squibb.

“I’ve explored the nature of brain and mind from so many perspectives over the last decades – from the molecular and cellular physiology of neurons, electrode arrays implanted in monkey brains and EEG signals in humans, to the behavior of human systems from small informal rural economies to the building and managing of teams and organizations. And of course, observing the nature and meanderings of my own mind and relationship to the world. Across all of this the quest has always been for an overarching framework to understand the place of the brain and mind in the creation of the world in a way that integrates across all of its diverse outcomes.

As I see it, Sapien Labs is an adventure in understanding, but also an important practical effort to help us guide our individual and collective human journey.”

Lab Talk

Natural Variations in Olfactory Receptors Shape Odor Perception

Adaptation and Individual Differences in Visual Perception

Relating Individual Differences in Brain Organization and Connectivity to Behavior

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Sridhar Venkatesh

David Blanchflower

Dr. Sr. John-Mary Vianney

Jennifer Newson, Ph.D.

Maya Thiagarajan

Robert Carter

Dr. Shailender Swaminathan

Randy Winn

Randy Winn

Rahul Varma

Uttara Bharath

Callyn Giese

Joseph Taylor

Narayan Subramaniyam, Ph.D.

Olesia Topalo

Jerzy Bala, Ph.D.

Dhanya Parameshwaran, Ph.D.

Tara Thiagarajan, Ph.D.