Professor Gautam Menon

Gautam Menon heads the Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability at Ashoka University in Sonipat, India, where he is a Professor in both the Physics and Biology departments. He is a Commissioner on the Lancet Commission on “Strengthening the use of Epidemiological Modelling” as well as a contributor to the “Lancet Citizens’ Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System”. Prior to joining Ashoka, he spent two decades at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences in Chennai, India, where he was the founding Dean of the Computational Biology group. He was a member of the expert group that drafted the Science, Technology and Innovation Policy of India in 2020. He serves on grant review committees of  both the Human Frontier Science Program and the DBT-Wellcome Trust India Alliance, in addition to multiple national committees. He also serves on the Editorial Board of PLoS Global Health. He has written extensively for the general public on topics at the interface of science, society, health and climate change and was interviewed across multiple news media, both national and international, during the COVID-19 pandemic. A short video clip featuring his COVID-19 recommendations, made for the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare in India, has been viewed close to a million times. He is interested in policy issues at the intersection of health and climate change, specifically in OneHealth, as well as in ethical questions associated with this intersection.