The symposium will host experts from various areas of Environmental Studies as climate modelling, policy, law and governance, phenomenon of monsoons, GIS ,conservation and environmental education to name a few.

Mr. Jayant Kulkarni, Director

Jayant Kulkarni has a B.Tech and an M.Tech degree in Chemical Engineering from IIT (Mumbai). Although an engineer by qualification, his passion has always been for wilderness and nature. To pursue his interest, he joined the Indian Forest Service (IFS) from Maharashtra cadre. He was trained in wildlife management at Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun and was awarded silver medal for his performance. Jayant served as an IFS officer in Maharashtra and was posted in Melghat Tiger Reserve. After a few years of service, he resigned from IFS and returned to working actively in nature conservation, a field close to his heart. Jayant’s main interest is in nature conservation that can be linked to people’s participation. Currently, Jayant is the Executive Director of Conservation Programs. Jayant is an excellent bird watcher and photographer. He loves to trek, be in the wild, and is a foodie at heart.

Dr. Ramesh Vellore, Scientist E

Dr. Ramesh K Vellore works as a Scientist E at Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune. His expertise in the area of Atmospheric dynamics, global & regional modeling.

He is MSc (Madras) in Physics); M.Tech in Atmospheric Sciences from IIT(Kharagpur); MS in Applied Math from University of Kaiserslautern, Germany; MS and PhD in Atmospheric Physics from University of Nevada, Reno, USA. He has been felicitated by the Deutscher Academischer Austausch Dienst Award in 1999. He is a member of the American Meteorological Society and American Geophysical Union. His research publication is mainly in the field of Climate Change, Global and regional climate modeling, Dust storms and Aerosol Transport Modeling, Dynamical downscaling, Predictability and ensemble forecasting and Air-sea interaction. His Research Highlights on Impact of ENSO on variability of AIRS retrieved CO2 over India.

Mr. Mayuresh Prabhune, Science Journalist

Mr. Mayuresh Prabhune is an amateur astronomer since 1998. He is working for an organization – “Khagol Vishwa” in Pune. Professionally, he is a Science Journalist and through his work, he popularizes Astronomy and Science using Media. He is Secretary at Centre for Citizen Science, Pune and has worked on projects like “SATARK”, a landslide warning system. He is also involved in a project called as “Project Meghdoot”. It is a is a seven year ambitious project with a thought to study the phenomenon of Monsoon across India. The purpose of the study is to document the relation between Indian Summer Monsoon and the Indian society and that between the Monsoon and the nature. This project will collect traditional knowledge about the Monsoon from various languages, castes, tribes and cultures all over the India and will ultimately create the ever First Monsoon Encyclopedia. The documentation will be of immense utility to various agencies, farmers, fisherman, administrators, researchers and policy-makers.

Dr. Raja Sengupta, Associate Professor

Dr. Raja Sengupta is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography & McGill School of Environment. He is also an Associate Member in the School of Computer Science at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He did his M.Sc. in Earth Sciences from IIT Bombay and then MS (Geology) and PhD (Geography) from Southern Illinois University- Carbondale. He has received many international research grants, e.g. National Geographic and ICIMPACTS to name a few. His current research interests are in Agent-Based Modeling of complex biological and social systems. He also works on using GIS to understand anthropogenic disturbances on ecosystems and related policy issues.

Ms. Marianne Manuel, Dakshin Foundation

Marianne Manuel has done her M.Sc. in Environmental Studies from TERI University, New Delhi. She is an Assistant Director at Dakshin Foundation, Bangalore. She actively works towards the long-term vision and strategy for the institution, fundraising, administration as well as facilitates coordination between the programmes. Her research and interventions focus on issues around coastal governance and fish worker networks. Working closely with other environmental organisations and fish worker unions to carry out training and workshops on coastal laws and governance mechanisms. Some of her projects are: Advocacy support to National Campaign for Protection of Coasts (NCPC), Communicating legal information to fishing communities and Environmental Law Omnibus-an open access online repository on environmental laws in India.