On April 22, Professor Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School, and Director, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University, addressed the Thirteenth Session of the Distinguished Global Indian Speaker Series (DGISS) organized by Amity University Gurgaon.
The years of post-mortem that follow will dissect how we arrived here. But for now, the path out of the current inferno requires unwavering commitment to science, and perhaps tremendous rectitude. Let us examine what we can do in the coming months.
Harvard Professor Jinah Kim’s research, which was the topic of the Mittal Institute’s latest VAF Lecture Series, examines the role of women in South Asian art from a historical perspective, and attempts to understand how this depiction impacts the politics of gender and social status of women in the modern era.
The Global Alliance for Medical Innovation, a group of students and faculty based at
Harvard University working to increase access to healthcare via engineering and advocacy, was awarded a Mittal Institute Seed for Change grant in summer 2020. Their proposal explored the development of low-cost, scalable technologies to allow point-of-care diagnosis of common eye disorders in under-resourced regions of the globe.
This past Fall, the Mittal Institute began a program, Conservation of Culture, designed to support scholarship in art and conservation management, partnering with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS) Museum in Mumbai, the Harvard Art Museums’ Straus Conservation Center, and Harvard’s Graduate School of Design.
Through a collaboration between the Tata Trusts and the Mittal Institute, Project Empower is working to bridge the mental health provider gap in India by building a digital platform to provide virtual training and supervision to community health workers as they identify and treat common mental health disorders.
Panelists from around the globe gathered to explore the new book by Professor Ian Talbot, Director of the Centre for Imperial and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Southampton and Research Affiliate at the Mittal Institute. The book, The History of British Diplomacy in Pakistan, is the first study of the history of British diplomacy in Pakistan. It covers seven decades of British diplomacy in Pakistan, from 1947 through the “War on Terror.”
India, the world’s third-largest energy consumer, generates 80% of its energy from coal, oil and biomass. To meet its future projected growth, the International Energy Agency in Paris says that India will need to add an electric power system the size of the EU’s every 20 years. It has made great strides, including ensuring each village is connected to the power grid, and its solar PV deployment program is one of the world’s ambitious. Yet it faces many challenges – energy poverty, access to clean water, increased road transportation, and high temperatures that yield a demand for air conditioning.
On March 26, the Building Bharat Boston Biosciences (B4) program held a two-session online webinar to mark the conclusion of its final phase. The Building Bharat-Boston Biosciences (B4) Program is the second iteration of the earlier Boston-Bangalore Biosciences Beginnings Program. Funded by the Department of Biotechnology within the Government of India, the B4 program is a collaboration between the Institute of Bioinformatics and Applied Biotechnology (IBAB) in Bangalore, the Harvard Global Research Support Centre India, and the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University.
The Crossroads Emerging Leaders Program, a fully-funded academic and professional development opportunity for low-income, first-generation college students, is cultivating a dynamic network of young leaders spanning over 135 countries. In its fourth iteration—and second virtual iteration—Crossroads brought together program alumni, Harvard faculty and industry mentors to welcome interested students to the Crossroads community.
Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan in 1971. To mark 50 years of Bangladesh’s independence, the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University held a virtual conference, “Bangladesh @ 50: Looking Back, Looking Forward” on March 3 and 4, 2021. The conference highlighted the arc of Bangladesh’s history from the Language Movement through the Liberation War to the present – and the future.
The Mittal Institute’s April 7 talk, “The History of British Diplomacy in Pakistan,” is headlined by Ian Talbot, Mittal Institute Research Affiliate and Professor in History and Director of the Centre for Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies, University of Southampton. Ian has written extensively on the themes of the colonial Punjab, the Partition of India, and the political history of Pakistan, and is the author of a 2021 book, The History of British Diplomacy in Pakistan. The Mittal Institute caught up with Ian to discuss his early education, research motivations, and his new publication.