Dr. Sonal Katyal is a 2026 Google Higher Ed Faculty AI Fellow (EMEA) part of the inaugural cohort of the Google for Education Higher Ed Faculty AI Fellowship, selected from a highly competitive global pool of educators and researchers across the EMEA region for demonstrated work at the intersection of AI and higher education.
She is a PhD Economist and academic leader with 17 years of experience across higher education, curriculum design, and research in India and internationally. She serves as Program Director of the Faculty of Transformational Economics at James Lind Institute, Geneva — leading interdisciplinary programs for learners across 25+ countries at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral levels.
Her work focuses on AI in higher education, ethical AI use in academic research, and assessment design for digital-first learning environments. She has designed and delivered workshops on AI in Research and Dissertation Writing for international researcher cohorts and built ResearchMind — a publicly accessible AI ethics toolkit for academic researchers, available at https://drsonakatyal.github.io/researchmind/
Previously she has worked at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, GD Goenka University, and in partnership with Lancaster University UK. She holds a Certificate in Academic Practice from Lancaster University and is UGC-NET qualified in Economics.
Her research is published in SCOPUS and ABDC-indexed journals spanning health economics, international trade, environmental economics, and public policy. She serves on the editorial board of EC Nursing and Healthcare, a ranked UK journal, and is a member of the AI Leadership Council at BoodleBox.
She is based in Gurugram, India and is open to speaking engagements, academic consulting, and advisory roles in AI and higher education in India and globally.