Kalpana Balakrishnan

Kalpana Balakrishnan is an Indian medical researcher who is a professor and Dean (Research) at the Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research. Her research has been in the area of air pollution and environmental health risk assessments with a special focus on low and middle income countries. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Medical Sciences.

Early life and education Balakrishnan grew up in India. She was an undergraduate student at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. She was a doctoral researcher in biophysics at Johns Hopkins University, where she also worked as a postdoctoral researcher. Her doctorate considered the role of sulfhydral reagents in the regulation and modulation of cyclic nucleotide-gated channels. During her postdoctoral research, she became increasingly interested in public health, learning about health economics and population dynamics.

Awards and honours 1998 Harvard Medical School Award for Excellence in Environmental Health Research 1999 Outstanding Woman Scientist Award 2000 Hari Om Ashram Trust Award 2008 Public Health Foundation of India Award 2014 Elected to the National Academy of Medical Sciences of India 2021 Clarivate India Research Excellence Citation Award

Selected publications