Saravanan Thangarajan is a clinician-scientist and global-health strategist advancing a new architecture of equity in an age of climate disruption. As Faculty Affiliate at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Visiting Scientist at Ariadne Labs, he designs AI-driven and digital delivery models that move care from hospitals to homes, building scalable systems for rural, humanitarian, and post-disaster settings.
His leadership spans continents and sectors. In India, he modernized Tamil Nadu’s digital-health infrastructure for over 11 million people, scaled the national Tele-Health Mission managing 12 million cases, and built the 108 Emergency Medical Service Network that trained 5,500 paramedics and lowered maternal-child mortality by 1.1 percent. In Vietnam, he led the national integration of climate-health education for 12,000 medical students through collaborations with the WHO and World Bank. In the United States, he contributes to the NSF–MITRE Federal AI Data Science Working Group, shaping frameworks for AI ethics and digital equity.
Dr. Thangarajan serves on expert advisory committees of the World Health Organization, Wellcome Trust, and UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, advancing global strategies that connect climate finance, mental-health resilience, and reproductive-health equity.
He defines resilience not as endurance but as design, building intelligent, inclusive, and adaptive health systems that can think, learn, and endure in a warming world.
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Surviving the Heat: The Impact of Climate Change on Maternal and Infant Health in Tamil Nadu – Harvard Kennedy School, CID Voices
Climate Change and Maternal Health: A Student Grant Report – Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University
Maternal Resilience in Tamil Nadu Offers Lessons for Disaster Risk Reduction – UNDRR PreventionWeb
Manjappai to E-Autos’: Tamil Nadu Backs Women-Centric Climate Justice, Activists Flag Gaps– The News Minute
In Tamil Nadu, Climate Extremes Are Reshaping Maternal Well-Being– India Development Review (IDR)
