I am in this field by an fortunate accident. My undergraduate degree was in electrical engineering. But somehow, the idea of spending my life building faster and faster chips never fired up my imagination.

SA: Briefly, what would you describe as the basic thrusts of your research.

GR: I am environmental health scientist, and the term that best captures what I do is "exposure assessment". It refers to estimating the types and amounts of different chemical, physical, and biological agents that human beings are exposed to in the living and work environments. This involves actual measurements in people's homes, in factories and other workplaces, in outdoor environments. But it also involves mathematical and statistical modeling.

SA: When were you appointed to the University and where did you complete your graduate work ? What was the focus of your dissertation ?

GR: I obtained my PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1993. My doctoral dissertation was about using computed tomography - the CAT scans that are so popular in the medical field - and marry that technology with remote sensing. The goal was to be able to obtain CAT scans of pollutant distributions in large slices of the atmosphere, which would, in turn, be useful for atmospheric physicists and chemists. While the project was quite successful, somehow the technology never caught on. However, I had lots of fun doing the research.

I joined the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health in the School of Public Health at the University of Minnesota in December 1994. I became an assistant professor in occupational hygiene - a field that I did not know much about. I found out that it referred to evaluating and controlling the exposures of workers to hazardous agents in the workplace. My main job in the beginning was to conduct research on the physics of how particles suspended in the environment can be captured for further analysis.

SA: Why did you decide to enter academia ? Having joined academia, do you find it to be what you expected ? Why or why not ?

GR: I had always wanted to be an academic. The idea of living a 'life of the mind' was very romantic - albeit in a naïve way. I have always loved solving puzzles and problems. Imagine getting paid for doing something you loved ! The great time I had during my doctoral dissertation research only confirmed these feelings.

No, academia is not completely what I expected, but it is not too far off either. The complete intellectual freedom to pursue a particular idea is often tempered by the demands of bringing in research dollars. The university is much more of a corporate endeavour than I realized. But I still get to work on things that are interesting and intellectually challenging and also improve public health.

SA: What personal and/or intellectual factors steered you towards work in the field of Environmental and Occupational Health ?

GR: I am in this field by an fortunate accident. My undergraduate degree was in electrical engineering. But somehow, the idea of spending my life building faster and faster chips never fired up my imagination. In fact, it was downright depressing. Right around that time, I read a report by the Center for Science and the Environment called "The State of India's Environment- 1984" that described in horrific detail the devastation of the Indian environment, its consequences for human health, and the connections between the physical, social and economic environments. I could suddenly envision a career spent combining my background in science with something I cared about. I applied to go to graduate school in environmental science and engineering. I have never regretted that decision. I have done work on designing air pollution measurement instruments, understanding the basic physics of inhalation of airborne particles by humans, developing mathematical techniques for analyzing particle measurements made by air pollution instruments, and measuring air pollution in various types of human environments in the US, Canada and India.

SA: Tell us about your recent and current research projects , particularly those you are pursuing in India, and why you think they are significant.

GR: Respiratory diseases such as bronchitis, emphysema, and acute respiratory infections are the largest contributor to the national disease burden in India and many other developing countries. One of the major causes of such diseases is pollution from combustion of 'dirty fuels' such as wood, coal, biomass, and kerosene in poorly ventilated homes. This is especially true in lower income strata of society. My graduate students have been measuring the air levels of combustion byproducts in people's homes in Mysore and Bangalore, assessing their respiratory health, and evaluating their use of various types of fuels. Women and children are especially vulnerable populations since women do most of the cooking in most Indian households and also take care of young children. They are, therefore, disproportionately affected by such pollution. They also face the health effects of outdoor air pollution that is also increasing rapidly. These are typical of most societies undergoing rapid transition. This research is significant from several perspectives. Firstly, it is gathering primary pollution and health effects data of the sort that is very uncommon in India. It will be helpful to policy makers in developing country-specific exposure standards as well as intervention measures. Currently, Indian environmental standards are based on studies done in the developed world, and it is very problematic to extrapolate findings from work done in the West to a population that is very different by every health and socio-economic metric. Secondly, it provides a useful way to carry out technology transfer in area that is of growing interest to India. We have been collaborating with medical colleges, hospitals, state pollution control boards, and municipal corporations during the course of this work. While, in my view, this work is very important to India, it is hard to attract funding for this from US agencies. So, it is always a struggle to keep this work going.

Several of my other current projects involve reconstructing historical exposures - exposures that occurred several decades ago in a given industrial workplace - the health effects of which are only now becoming apparent. For example, one could work for decades in a smelter and then develop lung cancer. So, for conducting an epidemiological study of lung cancer due to occupational exposures, we need to reconstruct what the exposures were 30 or 40 years ago. This is high-tech detective work at its core, and involves mathematical modeling, and using expert opinions, since actual data is typically not available. This work, supported by the National Institutes of Health, is being carried out in this country and in Canada.

SA: Is there a social or ethical dimension to your research, or do you think research should have that dimension ?

GR: There are two types of research that one can do: research that is intellectually challenging but whose public benefit may not be immediately clear, and research that could have great public health benefits but is not particularly challenging intellectually. Occasionally, one is very lucky and gets to work on a project that has both ingredients. But for someone working in public health, the social and ethical dimensions of research are inescapable, and for me this was a big reason for entering this field. It is not at all the same as someone working on, say, general relativity, who would have to make the case that knowledge for its own sake is an ethical pursuit. But I do agree with that too.

SA: Are there particular intellectual or social figures, perhaps even books that have had a formative role in how you approach your work ? What about events ?

GR: The late Anil Agarwal (founder CSE) who wrote the State of the Indian Environment -1984.

Thomas Kuhn - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

SA: What would you say drives you in your work and in your life ?

GR: I think I need a lot more self-awareness before I can answer that.

SA: Family, passions outside academia?

GR: I met my wife Candace after I came to Minneapolis almost eight years ago. She was working in the same Division back then, and we would go running together. Soon after that we decided to stop using running as an excuse to see each other. So, Minnesota has been really good to me. We have a daughter, Sandhya, who is almost 6 years old. Our lives are taken up with her music lessons, her school homework, and her gymnastics classes. It is a wonderful time right now.

I really love going to the movies. I have had to ration myself after our daughter was born.

I also teach the Mahabharata to 10 and 11-year old kids on weekends at the Twin Cities Chinmaya Mission. It is a wonderfully complex and human story and and these kids are at the right age to learn about it. We have some very interesting discussions about the motivations of the various characters, and how difficult it is categorize people as good or bad.

Readers interested in learning more about Dr. Ramachandran’s work can go to his website in the Division of Environmental and Occupational Health in the School of Public Health (www.sph.umn.edu/eoh).