The Speakers

Prof. V. Srinivasa Chakravarthy obtained his BTech from IIT Madras, MS /PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. He received postdoctoral training in the neuroscience department at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston. The Computational Neuroscience Lab (CNS Lab) that he heads works on developing models of the basal ganglia, spatial navigation, stroke rehabilitation, and neurovascular coupling. He is the author of two books in neuroscience. He is the inventor of a novel script called Bharati, a unified script for Indian languages.

Profile - Dr. V Srinivasa Chakravarthy

Dr Arpan Banerjee is Professor and Scientist VI at the National Brain Research Centre (NBRC), Manesar, India. After his undergraduate degree in Physics from Presidency College Kolkata, and Masters from University of Pune he went to US for his PhD at the Center For Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, where his thesis investigated the neural basis of rhythmic bimanual coordination using empirical and theoretical approaches. Post PhD, he worked at the Center for Neural Science, New York University and the National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA before joining NBRC as Associate Professor/ Scientist IV in 2013. His lab has discovered the large-scale network mechanisms underlying audio-visual integration, communication strategies among brain networks during saliency processing using multimodal neuroimaging (EEG / fMRI) and computational approaches. Lately he has been involved in investigations targeting how sensory and affective processing reorganizes during healthy human lifespan ageing and in pathological scenarios and the development of whole brain network approaches to understand multi-scale mechanisms that transcend macroscopic scales of neural populations to the microscopic scale of neurotransmitter kinetics. 

Profile - Dr. Arpan Banerjee

Parul Verma is an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India. Previously, she was a postdoc at the University of California San Francisco, Department of Radiology. She obtained her Ph.D. at Purdue University. Before that, she obtained her B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT Bombay. Parul’s doctoral work has been recognized by a faculty lectureship award from Purdue Chemical Engineering, and her postdoctoral work has been awarded a fellowship by the Alzheimer’s association. Her research interests are broadly on mathematical modeling of the whole brain to understand the underlying biophysical mechanisms of the brain in health and disease.

Profile - Dr. Parul Verma

Dr Ashesh Dhawale is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Neuroscience at the Indian Institute of Science. He received his undergraduate training in Life Sciences and Biochemistry at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai. His doctoral research was on sensory coding in the olfactory bulb and hippocampus, supervised by Professor Upinder Bhalla at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) in Bangalore. During his PhD, he also collaborated closely with Dinu Albeanu at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to develop optogenetic approaches to study olfactory circuits. During his postdoctoral training with Bence Ölveczky at Harvard University, supported by Life Sciences Research Foundation and Charles A. King Trust fellowships, he developed new experimental platforms to study how the brain learns and executes skilled movements.

Profile - Dr. Ashesh Dhawale

Dr. David Titus is a Research Scientist in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Science at the University of Minnesota, USA. He began his research career as a neurophysiologist, earning both an MPhil and PhD in Neurophysiology from NIMHANS, Bangalore. Dr. Titus's research is centered on developing therapeutic interventions for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). His early work at the University of Miami focused on the development of pharmacotherapeutics for TBI-induced cognitive dysfunction. Currently, at the University of Minnesota, his research explores neural circuitry reorganizations following TBI in preclinical models, with a focus on developing closed-loop neurostimulation strategies to mitigate cognitive dysfunction caused by TBI. 

Profile - Dr. David J Titus 

Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan Ranganathan is a distinguished neurologist and the current Head of the Department of Neurology at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) in Chennai, India. With over three decades of experience in the field, he has served in numerous prestigious positions, including Director and Professor of Neurology at the Institute of Neurology, Madras Medical College, Chennai. He completed his M.D. and D.M. in Neurology from The Tamil Nadu Dr. MGR Medical University, where he also earned his Ph.D. in Neurology, focusing on Dementia. His qualifications include dual DNB certifications in Internal Medicine and Neurology, and he is a fellow of several prestigious institutions, including the Royal College of Physicians (London & Glasgow), the American Academy of Neurology, and the Indian Academy of Neurology.

Dr. Ranganathan is also an accomplished academic with over 150 thesis supervisions, numerous publications in leading journals, and authorship of several important books in neurology. He is a recognized leader in stroke care, particularly in the implementation of the "Hub and Spoke" model for stroke management in Tamil Nadu. Over the years, he has been honoured with multiple awards for his contributions to medical education and neurology, and continues to influence the field of neurology through his leadership, research, and dedication to teaching the next generation of medical professionals.

Profile - Dr Lakshmi Narasimhan 

Dr. Sathya Sriram is CEO, Preventive Health at Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Limited, with a mandate to shift consumer mindset from curative to preventive care for themselves and their families. In this capacity, she has been exploring and implementing innovative testing approaches to help determine the status of one’s health in an easy and accurate ways. She also helps build and validate predictive data models for improved clinical detection. Dr. Sathya has a Ph.D. in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from Johns Hopkins University. She brings her understanding of science, medicine and technology for the creation of consumer-facing product offerings for better health and longevity in the Indian population. Sathya has over 20 years of experience working in healthcare, media, governments and non-profits in

India, Southeast Asia and the USA.

 Profile - Dr. Sathya Sriram

Dr. Nivethida Thirugnanasambandam graduated with an MBBS degree from JIPMER Pondicherry followed by a Masters in Biomedical Engineering from IIT Bombay. She then did her PhD in Neuroscience with Prof Michael Nitsche at the University of Goettingen, Germany and a 5-year postdoc with Dr. Mark Hallett at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, Bethesda, USA. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering at IIT Bombay where she leads the Human Motor Neurophysiology and Neuromodulation Lab. Her research focuses on understanding the role of neural oscillations in the pathophysiology of movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease and harnessing it to modulate behavior using noninvasive brain stimulation or neurofeedback. Dr. Nivethida is recipent of the DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Clinical Research (Intermediate) fellowship and the Har Gobind Khorana Innovative Young Biotechnologist Award 2020.

Profile - Dr. Nivethida T

Dr Alekhya Mandali completed her PhD in Computational Neuroscience at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, in 2017, focusing on computational modelling of decision-making in Parkinson’s disease. She later worked as a post-doc on developing noninvasive brain stimulation protocols to modulate decision-making in health and disease. She joined the Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, in 2023 as a lecturer, where she heads the computational and cognitive neuropsychiatry lab. Her research interests aim to identify neural and computational markers in impulsive-compulsive and mood-related disorders and develop management options using brain stimulation techniques in neurological and neuropsychiatric conditions.

Profile - Dr. Alekhya Mandali