The Mittal Institute’s spring flagship events kicked off last week with standing room only for an Honorary Lecture by Prof. Diana Eck with faculty from across the university, alumni, students and many distinguished guests and experts on South Asia. The momentum continued the next day with a Science and Technology symposium focused on AI, empathy in medicine, genetics, and climate change in South Asia, culminating with this year’s Harish C. Mahindra Lecture by WHO expert Soumya Swaminathan. Read the event recap below!
On the first day, May 2, Professor Diana L. Eck gave a riveting talk to a crowd of more than 150 colleagues, students, faculty, alumni, and Mittal Institute affiliates about her long career of teaching and working in India – and the changes and challenges in India over these decades. Jack Hawley, Claire Tow Professor of Religion at Barnard College, who has known Prof. Eck for many years, opened the Honorary Lecture. After the talk, Eck was in conversation with Martha Selby, Sangam Professor of South Asian Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard University, to discuss the ways teaching and speaking about religion and politics have also changed over time. The recording of the lecture is available here.
On Friday, May 3, the Mittal Institute held its Annual Cambridge Symposium, culminating with the Annual Harish C Mahindra Lecture. Eighteen panelists, including experts from across Harvard and the world, presented their work and discussed ideas on this year’s theme of “Science and Technology – The Future of South Asia,” before WHO expert Soumya Swaminathan took the stage for her lecture on “Lessons from the Pandemic for Science and Technology.”
The day opened with Tarun Khanna, Mittal Institute Faculty Director and Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at Harvard Business School, in conversation with three experts on AI. Manish Gupta, Director, Google Research India, highlighted the company’s efforts to integrate some of the hundreds of Indian languages and dialects into AI technologies to counter the dominance of English. Balaraman Ravindran, Head of the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI) at IIT Madras, pointed out the importance of informed consent and raising awareness among the Indian public about the power of AI – an area in which he also advises the government. And Milind Tambe, Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, talked about his work as Principal Scientist and Director of AI for Social Good at Google Research. He presented on AI’s potential for societal good, citing examples such as using AI to improve maternal health.
In the second panel, moderator David Reich and speakers Vijay Chandru and Priya Moorjani talked about “Genetics and Medicine” in South Asia. David Reich, Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, unveiled findings on the genetic ancestry of modern Indians, including a significant admixture between ancestral North and South Asians. Priya Moorjani, Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California at Berkeley, elaborated on the implications of close genetic ancestry for disease spread, and on high Neanderthal ancestry in South Asia. Finally, Vijay Chandru, Visiting Scientist in Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discussed the increasingly affordable nature of genomic research and its implications for disease diagnosis and prevention. He also introduced the program GenomeIndia, which catalogs genetic variations on a large scale to enhance diagnostics and research.
“Accelerated by the need for genomic surveillance during the pandemic, India now has an enormous capacity in genomics that is world-class. It has been really satisfying to have played a role in this transformation.” – Vijay Chandru in this interview
Before breaking for lunch, attendees learned about the recently opened HUM SAB EK (We Are One) exhibition in CGIS South, which features the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on informal workers who are part of India’s Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). In conversation with project leader Satchit Balsari, Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School, SEWA’s General Secretary Jyoti Macwan provided insights into the grassroots and empowering nature of SEWA. She described how SEWA helped millions of farmers like herself through the hardships of the pandemic by employing a strong sense of unity. She also emphasized the empowerment of marginalized women through technology adoption. Harvard graduate students Hiteshree Das, MDes ’25, Kartikeya Bhatotia, MPP ’24, Robert McCarthy, BA ’23, and Deepak Ramola, EdM ’23, then shared their motivations and experiences working on this exhibition (read more here).
Attendees reconvened after the lunch to hear about “Understanding Climate Change in South Asia.” Moderator Dan Schrag, Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology and Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Harvard University, set the stage with an overview of how South Asian countries contribute relatively little to climate change but suffer disproportionally from its impacts. Panelists Natalie Ayers, Research Affiliate and Data Science Intern at CrisisReady; Ahmed Shaikh, Assistant Professor at Mount Sinai in New York; and Francesca Dominici, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population, and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, further discussed the health impacts of climate change. They particularly focused on heat waves, which, they say, will become an even more pressing issue in the near future. Panelists also introduced various initiatives they are involved in, including Mittal Institute’s climate programs: COMMUNITY HATS and Climateverse.
“We are developing new technologies that hopefully will allow us to respond very effectively to this climate crisis. We need to come together to do this. And I also think that thanks to the fact that we are all better connected than we used to be […], we can analyze our data more effectively.” – Francesca Dominici in this interview
Another afternoon panel brought Vikram Patel, Paul Farmer Professor at Harvard Medical School, together with renowned psychiatrist Bharat Vatwani, co-founder of the Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation in Mumbai and recipient of the Ramon Magsaysay Award 2018. In an hour-long fire-side chat, Vatwani elaborated on his decades of experience working with mentally ill homeless in Mumbai and beyond, and his empathy-based passion to help them. While partially filling a critical gap in healthcare, Vatwani expressed his frustration with the limitations of his work and emphasized the need for better care for these very marginalized communities.
“This talk [was] an attempt to bring focus to the role of emotions in global health and social medicine, and an attempt to exemplify the same through the work of Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation with the wandering mentally ill roadside destitute on the streets of India. And perhaps to hopefully underscore that, ‘in dark times, attempts are precious; they always matter.’” – Bharat Vatwani in this interview
As a special afternoon intermission, the Mittal Institute and its affiliated faculty took a moment to honor Richard Cash, Senior Lecturer on Global Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Through personal anecdotes and a look back on his academic journey, colleagues and friends paid tribute to Cash’s inspiring contributions to global health, especially his achievements with Oral Rehydration Therapy (ORT) and dedication to advancing healthcare initiatives worldwide.
The day culminated with this year’s Harish C. Mahindra Lecture by Soumya Swaminathan. She delivered a keynote address on “Lessons from the Pandemic for Science and Global Health,” in which she discussed the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic from the perspective of her work as Chief Scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO) from 2019-2022. She also elaborated on the importance of future pandemic preparedness, including the need for accelerated vaccine development, and underscored the significance of investing in healthy environments in addition to healthcare.
The symposium concluded with a reception, providing attendees with an opportunity to network and reflect on the day’s discussions.
Text and Photos by Bettina Wyler, Mittal Institute Communications Manager