Panels

Panel 1 - From Zero to Billions? Insights from Scaling Innovations in the Public Sector

This panel will examine how to translate innovative ideas to societal impact at population scale. Drawing on panelists’ deep experience driving large-scale programs in health, education, gender equity and other domains, we will discuss the key factors determining success and failure of scale-up initiatives, as well as tips for researchers on how to positively engage with the public sector.

Moderator: Bill Thies, Everwell

Bill Thies is Co-founder and Chair at Everwell, a spinout organization from Microsoft Research that develops and scales innovative technologies for national health programs. Everwell partners with the government to develop and maintain Ni-kshay, India’s national platform for tuberculosis, which has supported over 60 million people over the last five years. Previously, Bill was based at Microsoft Research for 13 years, where he sought to apply technology to positively impact health, education, and other high-value domains. Bill earned his B.S., M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked on programming languages for multicore processors and microfluidic chips.  His work has led to over 90 peer-reviewed publications and has been recognized with various awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship.

Panelist

Raghu Dharmaraju, CEO of ARTPARK at the Indian Institute of Science, has been building and scaling innovations and institutions for impact for over two decades He is a Fellow of the Lancet Commission for Reimagining India’s Health Systems. ARTPARK, a double winner of the Global Grand Challenge for Catalyzing Equitable AI by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, fosters AI and robotics innovations for the developing world, with initiatives in health, climate, languages, and industry. Previously, as a founding leader of Wadhwani AI, he built a portfolio of AI solutions that won global recognition, partnered with India’s Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization, and helped lead a COVID response effort for Mumbai. He has also been a med-tech startup mentor/selector for DBT-BIRAC, Stanford Biodesign, and Grand Challenges India. Earlier, he took the Embrace infant warmers from first users to over 300,000 babies in 20 countries. At Xerox PARC and Corning, he helped commercialize technology and build a $150M/year global business. Raghu is an alumnus of IIT Madras, UMass Amherst, and Cornell.

Azeez Gupta is a social entrepreneur and co-founder of Rocket Learning, an ed-tech non-profit impacting a million low-income children in India. He also serves on the Indian government’s Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) Taskforce and on UNICEF’s working groups. Rocket Learning partners with central and state governments at scale in India to support ECCE and foundational learning for 3-8 year olds. Their innovations have been profiled in Harvard Business School, UNESCO and Forbes case studies, studied by MIT-JPAL and Brookings, and awarded by MIT Solve, Mulago Foundation, Elevate Prize and the WEF. Azeez is a Draper Richard Kaplans Foundation Social Entrepreneur, Agency Fund Fellow and BusinessWorld’s 40 under 40 Disruptor. He started his career at McKinsey & Company, before a stint leading large-scale programs at Pratham. Azeez was a Goldsmith Fellow and Education Innovation Fellow during his MBA from Harvard, and completed his B.Tech from IIT Delhi.

Poonam Muttreja, Executive Director of the Population Foundation of India, has for over 40 years been a strong advocate for women’s health, reproductive and sexual rights, and rural livelihoods.  She has co-conceived the popular transmedia initiative, Main Kuch Bhi Kar Sakti Hoon – I, A Woman, Can Achieve Anything. Before joining Population Foundation of India, she served as the India Country Director of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for 15 years and has also co-founded and led the Ashoka Foundation, Dastkar, and the Society for Rural, Urban and Tribal Initiative (SRUTI). Poonam is a member of the Governing Council and Board of ActionAid International and India and is a member of a committee on Population Dynamics and Women’s Empowerment at The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Washington DC. An alumna of Delhi University and Harvard University’s John F Kennedy School of Government, Poonam serves on the governing council of several non-governmental organizations, and is a regular commentator in India and globally for television and the print media.

Anaita Singh is supporting the mission to leverage digital to enable every individual with an equal opportunity to access healthcare services. She is currently a Program Officer within the Digital team at the Gates Foundation, ICO. She supports the health strategy and investments in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Assam; AI in Health and at the national level for Family Health (FP, MICYN, MNCH) and supporting Foundation wide efforts with a specific focus in India on bridging the gender digital divide. Prior to this, she was supporting the Foundation and its partners (national and state level) in external capacity on core digital health initiatives. Previously, she supported the thinking behind the National digital health architecture with ACCESS Health International, having worked on the implementation of large-scale digital maternal health and nutrition programs at Dimagi, as well as with BCG (Social Sector Practice) and Clinton Health Access Initiative. She started her career in the private sector with Citibank and has over 12 years of experience across India and Africa in public health, research and strategy, of which the last 10 years have been dedicated to digital health in the social sector. Within digital health, her expertise lies in supporting development of the DPI for health ~ digital health architecture for India, digital gender divide and digital enablement of FLWs and citizens to strengthen last mile service delivery.

Panel 2 - Exploring Challenges and Future Trajectory of AI Governance

This panel will explore the emerging social, political, and economic concerns around development and deployment of A.I. as a general-purpose technology. The panelists will deliberate on themes including governance and regulatory challenges, epistemic challenges, and sustainability challenges presented by AI.

Moderator: Dr. Praveen Priyadarshi, Department of Social Science and Humanities, IIIT-D

Dr. Praveen Priyadarshi completed his Ph.D. in Development Studies from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), London. His academic interest lies at the intersections of the categories of space, institutions and policy especially in the urban context. He brings these categories to bear upon his understanding of contemporary politics in India and the Global South. Before joining us, Praveen has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science, Zakir Husain Delhi College, Evening, University of Delhi (DU). His publications include papers in Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) and a co-edited book from Pearson Longman, titled Contemporary India: Economy, Society, Politics. He has been an Associate at the Crisis States Research Centre, LSE, and at the Developing Countries Research Centre (DCRC), University of Delhi. He was the Tata Ph.D. Fellow at the Asia Research Centre (ARC), at the London School of Economics.

Panelist

Dr. Nimmi Rangaswamy serves as Research Professor in the Kohli Centre on Intelligent Systems, IIIT-Hyderabad. Dr. Rangaswamy studies the Anthropological aspects of AI, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), ICT and has published widely in SIGCHI, CSCW, ICTD, and COMPASS. Dr. Rangaswamy is a member of the international advisory board of the UN University Institute in Macau, and consultant with IIIT Delhi, NID Bangalore design department, and IIT Gandhinagar for their digital humanities.

Dr. Vivek Kant serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Design, IIT-Kanpur where he leads the ‘Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems Studio’. Dr. Kant’s research and publications focus on Human-Machine Interaction, History and Philosophy of Design and Engineering, Design Epistemology, Ergonomics and Cyber-physical Systems.

Dr. Lakshminarayanan Subramanian is a Professor of Computer Science in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU. He is also a joint faculty in the Department of Population Health department, NYU Grossman School of Medicine and is an affiliate faculty in the Department of Technology, Operations and Statistics, NYU Stern School of Business. His research interests are in the areas of networked systems, machine learning and AI/ML for health, sustainability and socio-economic development. He leads the Open Networks and Big Data Lab and is a member of the NYU Systems group. He is associated with the Center for Technology and Economic Development, Center for Data Science and NYU WIRELESS. He is a Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Entrupy Inc, that uses machine vision algorithms and microscopy to authenticate physical goods and enable trustworthy commerce. He is the Co-Founder of Gaius Networks, that powers Flipped.ai, an AI driven marketplace for hiring and upskilling talent. He is also the Co-Founder of Vel.ai, a startup that focuses on Shock Resilient AI to make enterprises resilient to economic, political and natural shocks.

Dr. Azra Ismail is an Assistant Professor in Biomedical Informatics at Emory University, where she directs the CARE Lab (Collective Action & Research for Equity). Her research focuses on the design of data/AI-driven systems that aim to achieve health equity for marginalized communities and care workers. Dr. Ismail holds a Ph.D. in human-centered computing and an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Georgia Tech. Additionally, she is the co-founder of MakerGhat, an educational nonprofit in India dedicated to nurturing the next generation of leaders and entrepreneurs from underserved communities. Dr. Ismail has received several honors for her work, including the Google Award for Inclusion Research, the ACM SIGCHI Dissertation Award, and Forbes 30 under 30 Asia. She was also named to the list of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics and 75 Women in STEAM by the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India.