Events

School of Law invites you to a Distinguished Public Lecture on Building a world-class public policy school by Prof. T. S. Gopi Rethinaraj, Professor of Physics, Sustainability, and Public Policy at Sai University.

Abstract:
Public policy research and education has for long been shaped and influenced by a handful of North American universities. However, with the expansion of public policy schools in Asia during the last two decades, the landscape for public policy training, research, and education is changing fast. For a country with a population of 1.4 billion, India has visibly lagged behind in establishing public policy schools despite the tremendous potential they offer. This talk will review the history of global public policy education and highlight the prospects and challenges for establishing a world-class public policy school in India.


About the Speaker:
T.S. Gopi Rethinaraj is a Professor of Physics, Sustainability, and Public Policy at Sai University in Chennai. Before joining Sai University, he was the Director and Professor of Energy Sciences at Atria University in Bengaluru. Earlier, he was Visiting Professor at the Divecha Centre for Climate Change, Indian Institute of Science; Associate Professor of Energy and Environment, and Academic Head of the PhD Program at the National Institute of Advanced Studies. Before moving to India in 2014, he was a faculty member and part of the founding cohort at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore for ten years. He has also taught in public policy schools at the University of Tokyo, Japan, and Nazarbayev University, Kazakhstan. He has held visiting appointments at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and the American Association for Advancement of Science in Washington DC during which he conducted research in science and public policy. Before his academic career, he worked as a science reporter for the Indian Express in Mumbai. He received a journalism fellowship from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Chicago in 1999 for investigative reporting on science, technology, and the environment.
He was awarded Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2005 and was a research affiliate at the Illinois Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security from 1999 to 2005. He has bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Bharathidasan University. His research and teaching interests include public policy analysis, science and technology policy, energy and climate policy, and civilian and military uses of nuclear energy.