The Balsari Lab comprises a large, interdisciplinary, and global team of researchers, practitioners and community members. Current research and education programs are focused in the Americas and South Asia, with partnerships that span the globe. Our research and innovation priorities are based on exhaustive population-based studies, deep community engagement, and clinical practice in hospitals in the Global North and South. All data, code, educational content, and digital tools are publicly accessible.
Dr. Satchit Balsari is Associate Professor in Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; and Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
He is affiliate faculty at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, the Center for International Development (CID) at Harvard Kennedy School, and the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability; and serves on the steering committee of the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard and the Harvard Global Health Institute.
Dr. Balsari’s research and teaching are focused on complex humanitarian emergencies and digital health implementation science in resource-poor settings. He has worked with populations affected by war and disasters in Iraq, South Sudan, Jordan, Haiti, Puerto Rico and across South Asia. In the most vulnerable communities in the world, his team has leveraged cutting-edge digital tools and citizen science to advance public health planning, advocacy, and response.
Dr. Balsari co-directs CrisisReady.io, a research-response platform that builds data-driven decision tools for local communities and response agencies affected by disasters globally. Dr. Balsari is founding director of the tri-institute Climate and Human Health fellowship at Harvard, leads the climate platform at the Mittal Institute, and is co-investigator on the Salata Institute’s inaugural interfaculty cluster grant on Climate Change Adaptation in South Asia. He directs the Harvard India Digital Health Network at the Mittal South Asia Institute. IDHN’s outputs continue to shape the technological and policy landscape of digital health in India.
Prior signature initiatives include EMcounter (a customizable, portable digital surveillance tool, the latest iteration of which was used at the world’s largest mass gathering, the Kumbh Mela in India) and Voices, a crowd-sourced, online disaster response analysis tool. In 2018, in collaboration with Professor Caroline Buckee (Epidemiology), he co-led the Hurricane Maria Mortality Study.
Dr. Balsari is a graduate of Grant Medical College, Mumbai; and completed his medical training at Harvard, Cornell and Columbia. Dr. Balsari is an Asia Society Fellow, an Aspen Ideas Scholar, and the youngest recipient of the BC Roy Award awarded by the President of India, the nation’s highest honor in medicine.
Research Team
- Shubhangi Bhadada, Mittal Institute Fellow; Senior Research Fellow, BalsariLab
- Natalie Ayers, Doctoral Student, Department of Government, at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Research Associate, Crisisready
- Robert Meade, Climate Fellow, Salata South Asia Adaptation Cluster; CommHats
- Kartikeya Bhatotia, Climate Fellow, Mittal Institute
- Karthik Girish, Research Associate, Master in Urban Planning’ 25, Harvard Graduate School of Design
- Hiteshree Das, Research Associate Master in Design Studies’ 25, Harvard Graduate School of Design
- Catharina Guidice, Fellow, Climate and Human Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- Noah Rosenburg, Fellow, Climate and Human Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
- Felipe González Casabianca, Research Associate, CrisisReady
- Abhishek Bhatia, Doctoral Student, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Harvard Collaborators
- Caroline Buckee, Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- Tarun Khanna, Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor, Harvard Business School; Director, Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University
- Jennifer Leaning, Senior Fellow (former Director), Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights; retired Professor of the Practice at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health
- Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization and Professor of Urban Design and Planning, Harvard Graduate School of Design
- Peter Huybers, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering; Department Chair of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
- Daniel Schrag, Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology, Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering, and Co-Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, Harvard University
- Caleb Dresser, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School; Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard Chan School; Director of Healthcare Solutions at Harvard Chan C-CHANGE
External Collaborators
- Sneha Asrani, Senior Research Associate, Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE)
- Shitij Arora, Professor of Internal Medicine, Albert Einstein School of Medicine, USA
- Mihir Bhatt, Director, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, India
- Rajani Bhat, Pulmonary Critical Care Specialist, Bangalore, India
- Dhinagaran D, St John’s Research Institute; India Digital Health Net
- Dhruval Gadhvi, Research Associate, Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE)
- Bharat Kalidindi, St John’s Research Institute, India Digital Health Net
- Manoj Kumar, Founder, Social Alpha
- Jay Lemery, Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Colorado, USA
- Charuta Mandke, Professor & Head, Department of Ophthalmology, Dr. R.N. Cooper Medical College & Hospital, Mumbai
- Manoj Mohanan, Creed C. Black Professor of Public Policy and Interim Dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University, USA
- Biraj Patnaik, Executive Director, National Foundation for India
- Vishal Pathak, Consultant, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute, India
- Tony Raj, Professor of Physiology, Dean, St. John’s Medical Research Institute, India
- Rajan Raval, Professor, CEPT University; Senior Advisor at Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE), CEPT Research and Development Foundation (CRDF)
- Sabina Faiz Rashid, Professor, Mushtaque Chowdhury Chair in Health and Poverty; Director, Center of Excellence for Gender, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (CGSRHR), BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health, BRAC University
- Andrew Schroeder, Vice President of Research, Direct Relief, USA; co-director, CrisisReady.io
- Yashkumar Shukla, Principal Researcher and Center Head at Center for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE)
- Amita Sudhir, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Virginia, USA
- Verghese Thomas, St John’s Research Institute; India Digital Health Net
- Jay Vaidya, Associate Professor of Medicine, John Hopkins School of Medicine
- Akash Yadav, Research Associate; AIDMI
- Self Employed Women’s Association