Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS delivered a talk at IISER, Pune based on their recently published paper, ‘A scalability-centric perspective on global human development within environmental limits’ on 28 February 2025. The talk was delivered as part of the ECS Seminar and was titled, ‘What levels of development can humanity “sustainably” aspire to?’
Dr Chirag Dhara, Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, SIAS delivered a talk at the Prof R Ananthakrishnan Colloquium at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune on 25 February 2025. The talk was titled “Is India a good or bad performer on climate change?”
Abstract of the talk
Climate performance indices are widely used to evaluate national climate action efforts, but significant discrepancies exist among prominent indices such as the Environmental Performance Index (EPI), Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), and Climate Action Tracker (CAT). These divergences have led to contentious public disagreements between governments and index developers in the past.
Divergences stem from methodological choices that reflect different underlying assumptions about climate performance evaluation. In particular, our analysis finds that the extent of emphasis on equity can lead to widely divergent, even contradictory, assessments by indices.
We introduce a conceptual framework to categorise performance indices based on the worldviews/perspective they encode, often unknown even to the index developer. Our results demonstrate that indices sharing similar underlying perspectives tend to produce concordant rankings. We call for an explicit articulation of perspectives encoded in indices based on our framework, and hypothesize that this would enable more constructive resolution of conflicts.
Dr Suchika Chopra, Assistant Professor, Economics, SIAS recently presented the research paper, titled ‘Effects of Health Shocks on Time Spent in Home Production’, at IIT Bombay from 17-19 February organised by YSI INET Economics. This paper examines the non-monetary costs associated with health shocks and evaluates whether incorporating home production helps sustain effective consumption during a health shock or exacerbates its overall impact.
Dr Vivek Tewary, Assistant Professor, Mathematics, SIAS recently delivered a lecture at a discussion meeting on ‘Quantitative Theory of Homogenization’ at IIT Bombay held from 17 to 22 February 2025. Dr Tewary’s lecture was titled, Schauder Estimates for Divergence-Form Systems’.
Schauder theory in regularity theory of PDEs is a perturbative method to transfer the regularity of coefficients to the solutions. These methods are classical and form a base for any and all questions of regularity such as those that pertain to homogenization where uniform estimates can be obtained.
The workshop is on multiscale methods in Mathematics particularly as they apply to questions of quantitative homogenization. Homogenization, loosely speaking, is the study of differential equations with rapidly oscillatory coefficients. The workshop showcased a collection of results (both old and new) dealing with convergence rates and uniform (with respect to a small parameter) regularity estimates. It featured lectures by Proffesor Christophe Prange of Cergy Paris Universite on Large Scale Regularity in Homogenization.
View lecture recordings, here
Professor Madhuri Saripalle, Professor, Economics and Chairperson – MBA Programme, IFMR GSB, participated in the International Conference on Enabling Sustained Growth in Emerging Asia, held on 7-8 February at the School of Economics, University of Hyderabad. She presented her paper titled Agricultural Transformation in Telangana: A Case Study of Paddy Cultivation, which is part of an ongoing project supported by the IFMR Fund for research in Humanities and Social Sciences.
Dr Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Assistant Professor, Physics, SIAS, gave an oral presentation about his research work at the International Conference on Magnetic Materials and Applications (ICMAGMA2025) organised by the Magnetics Society of India (MSI) in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. The conference was held from February 12-14, 2025, at the IISc campus in Bengaluru, India. The title of Dr Chakrabarty’s talk was , ‘31P NMR studies of the 1/3 depleted 2D kagomé lattice system’.
Abstract of the talk
Subtle interactions in low-D magnets often result in novel states in matter. In this work the team has carried on the bulk and 31P NMR measurements and (DFT+U) electronic structure calculations on the single crystals of Cu-based S=1/2 compound BaCu2(PO4)2(H2O). Based on the hopping parameters calculated from DFT, they find the spin network of the titled compound to be a 2D layer of 1/3-depleted anisotropic kagomé lattice with the magnetic couplings J1, J2, J3, and J4. They observe a broad maximum in the magnetic susceptibility however, the 31P NMR local probe measurements feature an additional sharp magnetic anomaly which confirms the presence of a magnetic transition at TN = 10.5 K. While 1/T1 falls very steeply with temperature below TN, it follows a sublinear power-law behaviour above TN, indicating the presence of dynamic short-range correlations. All these features confirm the complex 2D spin network in this compound.
Dr Sambaiah Gundimeda, Associate Professor, Politics, SIAS was invited as a resource person for the Faculty Development Programme at GITAM University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. The programme, held from 12 to 14 February 2025, featured Dr Gundimeda delivering two insightful lectures. His sessions focused on effective publication strategies and research proposal writing for securing funding.
The titles of his lectures were, ‘Unlocking the Secrets of Successful Publishing’ and ‘Crafting Comprehensive Budget Strategies’.
Professor Lakshmi Kumar, Dean, IFMR GSB led the seminar on ‘Global Business Transformation for a Resilient Future’ organised by the Commerce Department of Stella Maris College, Chennai.
Professor Jayaram Ramakrishnan, Professor of Practice, Finance, IFMR GSB, presented a webinar on ‘Cost Optimisation for MSMEs’ to members of ICAI on behalf of the MSME & Startup Promotion Board (MSPB) of The Institute of Cost Accountants of India on 7 February 2025. The session was attended by over 450 ICAI professionals and was presided over by the Chairman of the MSME Board and a Central Council member of ICAI.
Dr R S Sathya Saminadan, Associate Professor of Practice, Marketing, IFMR GSB participated in a panel discussion on ‘Data-Driven Decision Making: Real-World Applications & Best Practices’ at Guru Nanak College, on 7 February 2025.
