Dr. Shailender Swaminathan
Director, Sapien Labs Centre for Human Brain and Mind at Krea University
Dr. Shailender Swaminathan is the Director of the Sapien Labs Centre for Human Brain and Mind at Krea University. His expertise lies in Health Economics and Policy and applied econometrics.
Shailender returned to India after two decades in the United States where he held diverse academic and research positions at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, the University of Alabama, Birmingham, and Brown University’s Department of Health Policy. His work has spanned various domains of health policy including understanding the impact of health insurance expansions on utilization and health in both the United States and India. Most recently he was Dean of Arts and Sciences at Sai University.
His present interests lie in bringing together cross-disciplinary perspectives to develop insights into brain and mind health that can be translated into impactful public policy and programs at large scale.
Shailender has a PhD in Economics from University of Southern California and is an adjunct faculty member in Brown University.
“Mental health is crucial to the successful functioning of society. Yet there is only a limited understanding of how social, economic, and environmental factors determine mental health. The absence of high quality large-scale data is a huge constraint, especially in the context of low-and middle-income countries. What draws me to Sapien Labs is the focus on large-scale data that combines EEG recordings of the brain, self-reported mental health, and detailed information on the social, economic and environmental conditions under which individuals live with cross-disciplinary perspectives and rigorous analysis to help address questions of fundamental importance in the current, global context. I see this as a unique opportunity to understand the drivers of mental health and am eager to see how this work can be used to inform government policy.”