People

Honorable Shri Sanjeev Kumar (IAS) is the Chairman of Gujarat Pollution Control Board and Managing Director of Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Limited and has a wide experience of working in various Government Departments and Public Sector Undertaking.

Previously, he held various distinguished positions including being the Collector for Kheda & Gandhinagar, Addl. Secretary (Budget), Secretary (Expenditure) and Secretary (Economic Affairs) with the Government of Gujarat. He was the MD of Gujarat State Investment Limited and has also served as Director on the Board of Gujarat State Financial Services Ltd, Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation, Gujarat State Electricity Corporation, Gujarat Mineral Development Corporation, Gujarat Urban Development Company Limited, Gujarat State Transport Corporation Ltd, Gujarat Infrastructure Development Board, Diamond Research and Mercantile City Ltd, Urban Ring Development Corporation Ltd, Dholera Industrial City Development Ltd. among others.

He graduated with a bachelor’s degree from I.I.T. Kharagpur and with a Master’s in Public Affairs from Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota.

V. Shah is the Member Secretary of Gujarat Pollution Control Board where he also holds the post of the Senior Environment Engineer. In his experience spanning 30 years, he has gained expertise in building and implementing waste treatment and management solutions, pollution abatement, zoning for siting of industries and e-Governance for implementation of environment legislation.

Previously, he was involved in Environment Planning for the preparation of ‘Zoning Atlas for Siting of Industries’ right from its inception. He has also played a pivotal role in conceptualizing and implementing the e-Governance project (XGN) of Gujarat Pollution Control Board earning him awards and accolades. He has represented the country at UNIDO Regional conference on POP (Persistence Organic Pollutants) management in Ship breaking industry, in Bangkok, Thailand.

His under-graduation degree in Civil Engineering was from MS University Baroda and he has a Master of Science degree in Pollution Control from Sikkim Manipal University. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. from Sankalchand Patel University.

Michael Greenstone is the Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, the College and the Harris School, as well as the Director of the Becker Friedman Institute and the interdisciplinary Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago. He previously served as the Chief Economist for President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, where he co-led the development of the United States Government’s social cost of carbon. Greenstone also directed The Hamilton Project, which studies policies to promote economic growth, and has since joined its Advisory Council. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and a former editor of the Journal of Political Economy. Before coming to the University of Chicago, Greenstone was the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics at MIT.

Greenstone’s research, which has influenced policy globally, is largely focused on uncovering the benefits and costs of environmental quality and society’s energy choices. His current work is particularly focused on testing innovative ways to increase energy access and improve the efficiency of environmental regulations around the world. Additionally, he is producing empirically grounded estimates of the local and global impacts of climate change as a co-director of the Climate Impact Lab. He also created the Air Quality Life Index that provides a measure of the gain in life expectancy communities would experience if their particulates air pollution concentrations are brought into compliance with global or national standards.

Greenstone received a Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University and a BA in economics with High Honors from Swarthmore College.

Rohini Pande is the Henry J. Heinz II Professor of Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center, Yale University. She is a co-editor of American Economic Review: Insights.

Pande’s research is largely focused on how formal and informal institutions shape power relationships and patterns of economic and political advantage in society, particularly in developing countries. She is interested the role of public policy in providing the poor and disadvantaged political and economic power, and how notions of economic justice and human rights can help justify and enable such change.

Her most recent work focuses on testing innovative ways to make the state more accountable to its citizens, such as strengthening women’s economic and political opportunities, ensuring that environmental regulations reduce harmful emissions, and providing citizens effective means to voice their demand for state services.

In 2018, Pande received the Carolyn Bell Shaw Award from the American Economic Association for promoting the success of women in the economics profession. She is the co-chair of the Political Economy and Government Group at Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a Board member of Bureau of Research on Economic Development (BREAD) and a former co-editor of The Review of Economics and Statistics. Before coming to Yale, Pande was the Rafik Harriri Professor of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, where she co-founded Evidence for Policy Design.

Pande received a PhD in economics from London School of Economics, a BA/MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and a BA in Economics from Delhi University.

Nicholas Ryan studies energy markets and environmental regulation in developing countries. Energy use enables high standards of living but rapid, energy-intensive growth has caused many environmental problems in turn. Nick’s research measures how energy use and pollution emissions respond to regulation and market incentives. His work includes empirical studies of the effect of power grid capacity on electricity prices, how firms make decisions about energy-efficiency and how environmental regulation can be designed to best abate pollution at low social cost.

Nick is joining Yale University as a Cowles Foundation Fellow for 2014-15 and an Assistant Professor of Economics from 2015 onwards. He has been a Prize Fellow in Economics at Harvard University from 2012-2014. He received a PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2012 and a BA in Economics summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He previously worked as a Research Associate in the Capital Markets group at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, DC.

Anant Sudarshan is the Executive Director (South Asia) for EPIC. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the Department of Economics, University of Chicago. Prior to working at EPIC, Anant was the Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in the Sustainability Science Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He received his PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University and he holds undergraduate and masters degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) and Stanford University respectively.

Anant works at the intersection of environmental economics and engineering, with on-going research on a variety of areas including environmental regulation, air-pollution, climate change, energy efficiency, electricity and renewable energy. His present work includes collaboration with India’s Ministry for Environment and Forests to design and evaluate a pilot emissions trading program to regulate industrial air pollution. He is also working with the Government of Bihar on electricity distribution reforms designed to reduce losses and enhance the supply of power.

Sanjana Gorti is the Senior Research Manager at JPAL South Asia where she leads the Energy and Environment portfolio.

Prior to her Masters in 2017, she worked extensively in financial inclusion at Bharat Financial Inclusion Limited in Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat. During her Masters, she lead a Capstone project with the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication (MCTIC) of Brazil and developed a dashboard to track the country’s digital transformation progress against goals outlined in Brazil’s Digital Transformation Strategy.

She has a Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from Mumbai University and a Masters in Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.

Gargi Pal is a Senior Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia. She has previously worked on the Information Disclosure project in partnership with the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. Prior to this, she worked with KPMG Global Services for three years.

Gargi holds a master’s degree from TERI University and a bachelor’s degree from Maitreyi College (Delhi University), both in economics.

Prajval Jhunjhunwala is a Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia, where he works on the Emissions Trading Scheme project that aims to design, pilot, and evaluate market-based regulation of particulate matter in India. Prior to joining J-PAL in 2019, Prajval was working as a Data Analyst for Microsoft in Singapore. He has previously worked on research pertaining to exploitation in developing nations’ labour markets, and as a surveyor for a study on mental health amongst Bangladeshi migrants in Singapore.

He holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Economics and Data Analytics from Singapore Management University.

Nilima Pisharody is a Senior Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia, where she works on the Emissions Trading Scheme project that aims to design, pilot, and evaluate market-based regulation of particulate matter in India. Prior to joining J-PAL in 2021, Nilima was working as a Research Associate at Harvard Business School and the Center for Economic and Social Research (USC).

She holds a Master’s degree in Economics from University of Southern California (USC) and a PGDM (MBA) in Business Administration from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow (IIM L).

Prakriti is a Research Associate at J-PAL South Asia where she is working on the “Design, Evaluation and Scale-up for Particulate Matter Air Pollution” project in India. Previously, she interned with NITI Aayog on projects in public health.

She holds a BA (Honors) in economics from University of Delhi and a Masters in Environmental Economics from Australian National University.