CIS Team
CIS undertakes policy-focused, applied, and academic research on topics at the intersection of internet and society, driven by concerns of human rights and public interest. CIS is based in Bengaluru and New Delhi.
Directors
- Sunil Abraham, Interim Executive Director
- Elonnai Hickok, Chief Operating Officer
- Amber Sinha, Research Director
- Sumandro Chattapadhyay, Director
Senior Programme Manager
Programme Managers
Programme and Policy Officers
- Ambika Tandon
- Khetrimayum Monish Singh
- Mira Swaminathan
- Pallavi Bedi
- Pranav M. Bidare
- Saumyaa Naidu
- Shruti Trikanand
- Shweta Mohandas
- Shweta Reddy
- Torsha Sarkar
- Yesha Tshering Paul
Design and Communications Officer
Research Associates and Interns
Programme Associates and Community Advocates
- Ananth Subray PV
- Bhuvana Meenakshi
- Bodhisattwa Mandal
- Jayanta Nath
- Nitesh Gill
- Satpal Dandiwal
- Subodh Kulkarni
- Suswetha Kolluru
Administration and Finance
Directors
| Sunil Abraham | ||
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Sunil is the Executive Director of CIS. He is also a social entrepreneur and Free Software advocate. He founded Mahiti in 1998 which aims to reduce the cost and complexity of Information and Communication Technology for the Voluntary Sector by using Free Software. Today, Mahiti employs more than 50 engineers and Sunil continues to serve on the board as a board member. Sunil was elected an Ashoka fellow in 1999 to 'explore the democratic potential of the Internet' and was granted a Sarai FLOSS fellowship in 2003. Between June 2004 and June 2007, he managed the International Open Source Network, a project of the UNDP's Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme serving 42 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Between September 2007 and June 2008, he also managed ENRAP, an electronic network of International Fund for Agricultural Development projects in the Asia-Pacific facilitated and co-funded by International Development Research Centre, Canada. Sunil is the co-author for the following publications:
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| Elonnai Hickok | ||
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Elonnai is Chief Operating Officer at the CIS. Elonnai has graduated from the University of Toronto where she studied international development and political science. Elonnai leads the privacy, surveillance, and big data work at the Centre and has also written extensively on issues pertaining to intermediary liability, digital rights, identity, cyber security and DNA profiling. Elonnai has also worked as a consultant with the Open Society Foundations and with the Ranking Digital Rights project. Her publications include:
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| Amber Sinha | ||
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Amber is a Research Director at the CIS. He works on issues surrounding privacy, big data, and cyber security. Amber is interested in the impact of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and learning algorithms on existing legal frameworks, and how they need to evolve in response. He has studied humanities and law at National Law School of India University, Bangalore.
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| Sumandro Chattapadhyay | ||
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As a Director at the CIS, I co-lead the [email protected] programme and contribute to academic and public policy research on access to knowledge, data governance, and digital economy. My own research focuses at the intersections of media technologies and political economy. I am also keenly interested in computational techniques in arts, humanities, and social research, and methodological questions thereof. I studied economics in Visva-Bharati, Shantiniketan, and in Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. I was a member of the founding team at the MOD Institute, Bangalore; led a data analysis and visualisation project at the Azim Premji University, Bangalore; and was a Research Associate at the Sarai programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi.
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Senior Programme Manager
| Anubha Sinha | |
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Anubha is a Senior Programme Manager at the CIS. She has contributed to the Pervasive Technologies Project, works on issues involving intellectual property law and openness, and co-leads the Regulatory Practices Lab. She is a lawyer by training.
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Programme Managers
| Puthiya Purayil Sneha | |
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Sneha is the Programme Manager of the [email protected] programme at the CIS. Her training is in Humanities, and she has previously worked in the field of higher education. She is presently engaged with a project on mapping the emergent field of Digital Humanities in India, and is also interested in questions on the nature of textuality, reading and writing practices in the digital sphere.
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| Tito Dutta | |
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Tito is a Programme Officer associated with the Access to Knowledge team at the CIS, and his work focuses on supporting Indic Wikimedia Communities and community members to plan and conduct Wiki-events.
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| Arindrajit Basu | |
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Arindrajit is a Research Manager at the Centre for Internet & Society with the Cyber Security Project. His primary interests lie in the fields of International Relations and Public Law. His work at CIS focuses largely on developing normative frameworks for the regulation of emerging technologies internationally and conceptualizing the strategic role that India and other emerging economies can play in this space. He is a lawyer by training and holds a BA,LLB (Hons) degree from the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata and a LLM in Public International Law from the University of Cambridge, UK.
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| Gurshabad Grover |
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Gurshabad manages legal and technical research in the freedom of expression team at CIS. He is interested in Indian constitutional law, intermediary liability, and advancing public interest in standards bodies such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Prior to joining CIS, Gurshabad worked as a Legislative Assistant to a Member of Parliament (LAMP) Fellow. Gurshabad holds a degree in computer science and engineering.
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Programme and Policy Officers
| Aayush Rathi | |
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Aayush is a policy offer at CIS. He is currently engaged in exploring and contributing to emerging conversations around the future of work as well as cybersecurity. He has previously worked as a labour lawyer post his graduation in law and humanities from the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata.
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| Ambika Tandon |
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Ambika is a Senior Policy Officer at CIS, working on gender-based research in areas such as the future of work, sexual and reproductive health, and privacy. She is interested in the application of feminist research methods. She completed her postgraduate in Media and Development at the London School of Economics, and her undergraduate in English Literature from St. Stephen's College at the University of Delhi. .
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| Khetrimayum Monish Singh | |
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Khetrimayum Monish Singh is a Programme Officer at the CIS. He works on data governance and is interested in questions around data-driven community experiences and practices, specifically with regard to access, security, and identity. He has submitted his doctoral thesis at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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| Mira Swaminathan | |
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Mira is a programme officer at CIS. She has a bachelor of law degree from School of Law Christ University, Bangalore. At CIS, she works on projects relating to Digital Identity, Free Speech, Cyber Security and Regulatory Practices.
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| Pallavi Bedi | |
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Pallavi is a Senior Policy Officer at CIS where she will be conducting research on data protection and privacy. She is a lawyer by training having done her Undergraduation from the National Law Institute University, Bhopal and her Postgraduation in Public International Law from the Fletcher School of Law, Tufts University. Prior to joining CIS, she worked with a corporate law firm and the United Nations Development Programme, New Delhi.
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| Pranav M. Bidare | |
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Pranav is a Policy Officer at CIS. His work at CIS is primarily centred on Artificial Intelligence research, and research on issues surrounding Privacy, Cyber-security, and the Future of Work.
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| Saumyaa Naidu | |
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Saumyaa works as a designer and researcher. She creates visualisations and infographics to communicate research produced at CIS. She also works on critically examining the role of design in digital products and services, and in applying design for issues such as privacy, security, access to knowledge, and accessibility. While working for a graphic design studio, she was involved in creating information maps for historical monuments in Delhi. She is a Communication Design graduate from the National Institute of Fashion Technology, Delhi, and has a master’s degree in Social Design from Ambedkar University Delhi. Her interests include design history, design criticism, and cultural studies.
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| Shruti Trikanand | |
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Shruti is a programme officer at CIS, working on the project of digital identity. She is interested in exploring the use of technology that has the potential to increase inclusivity and safeguard individual rights. She completed her studies in law and humanities from the Gujarat National Law University.
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| Shweta Mohandas | |
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Shweta is a Policy Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society. Her areas of work and interest include Artificial Intelligence, Privacy and Intellectual Property Rights and India’s policies surrounding these issues. Prior to CIS she was a Research Associate to the (DIPP) Intellectual Property Rights Chair at IIT Madras. She has an LLM in Public International Law with a special focus on International Human Rights Law, Cyberspace Law and Climate Change Law and Policy.
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| Shweta Reddy | |
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Shweta is a Programme officer at CIS. She has a bachelor of law degree from Jindal Global Law School. At CIS she works on Privacy, Regulatory Practice and Artificial Intelligence.
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| Torsha Sarkar |
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Torsha is a lawyer by qualification, and currently a Policy Officer at CIS. Her primary interests are freedom of expression, intermediary liability and best practices in online content moderation.
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| Yesha Tshering Paul | |
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Yesha is a Programme Officer at the CIS and works on the Digital Identities project. She studied Law at ILS Law College, Pune, and has a Masters in Regulatory Governance from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
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Design and Communications Officer
| Akash Sheshadri | |
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Akash is a Designer by practice, having studied Graphic Design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. His previous engagements have been in the digital space as an Interface and User Experience designer. At CIS, Akash works at the emerging intersection of Design and Policy research, exploring avenues for impact through Design frameworks and tools. In his free time, he can be found creating art in various mediums and reading critical design.
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Research Associates and Interns
| Ranjit Singh | |
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Ranjit is a PhD candidate at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University. His dissertation project, Seeing Like an Infrastructure, examines the legal, administrative, and technological challenges in the implementation of India’s biometrics-based national identification project, Aadhaar. He is also involved in the Life of a Tuple project on the conceptualization, design, and implementation of an updated version of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam, India. Both projects are geared towards elucidating the rapidly changing understandings, practices, and evaluations of the state-citizen relationship mediated by information infrastructures in India.
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| Tasneem Mewa | |
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Tasneem Mewa is an undergraduate student at the University of Toronto studying Critical Development Studies. Learning from the work done by her supervisors and colleagues, she is currently conducting research at The Centre for Internet and Society, India on the topics of data, gender, technology, and labour. |
Programme Associate and Community Advocates
| Ananth Subray PV | |
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Ananth is a Programme Associate (Technical skills and metrics) with the Access To Knowledge team at the Centre for Internet and Society. He is a MSc student at Christ University, specialising in Mathematics.
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| Bhuvana Meenakshi | |
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Bhuvana Meenakshi is a Research Intern. |
| Bodhisattwa Mandal | |
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Bodhisattwa is a volunteer editor in different Wikimedia projects since 2012, mostly active in Bengali Wikisource, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. As a Wikidata Advisor at CIS, he supports Wikidata community in India both on-wiki and off-wiki, in all possible ways. He can be contacted at User Bodhisattwa. His contributions as a volunteer can be tracked here. |
| Jayanta Nath | |
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Jayanta Nath works as a Wikisource Project Advisor for CIS. As a Project Advisor of the Indic Wikisource Project, his work is to support Indic Wikisource Communities and community members to plan or conduct Wiki-events, support them with resources. |
| Nitesh Gill | |
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Nitesh Gill works with CIS-A2K as a Project Tiger 2.0 coordinator. |
| Satpal Dandiwal | |
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Satpal works as a Community Advocate for Punjabi Wikimedians. As a community advocate, his work is to increase the development of Punjabi Wikimedians User Group and community members. |
| Subodh Kulkarni |
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Subodh is a Community Advocate with the Access To Knowledge team at the CIS.
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| Suswetha Kolluru | |
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Suswetha has been contributing to Wikimedia and it's sister projects since November 2017 and I mainly contribute to En Wikipedia, Te Wikipedia, Wikidata. She is an undergraduate at VVIT and her major is Electronics and Communication. She is also part of the club VVIT WikiConnect and currently working as Project Tiger coordinator for 2019 at CIS A2K! |
Administration and Finance
| Ajoy Kumar | |
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Ajoy is an Administrator at the CIS. He manages all the events organised by CIS including hotel and travel bookings, does the liasoning with government offices and Members of Parliament, etc. Ajoy also works as a part-time lawyer doing property documentation.
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| Karthik Krishnan | |
| K.N. Medini | |
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Medini is a Senior Accounts Officer at the Centre for Internet and Society. Medini began her work as an accountant in 1992. After completing her Bachelors in Commerce from Andhra Pradesh S V University, she procured a Diploma in Accounts and began working with a Chartered Accountant to learn the ropes of her profession. For the past fifteen years she has worked with Chartered Accountants, companies and NGOs in handling company and organisation’s accounts. In 2003, she joined the Accounts team of Partners in Child Development, an EveryChild partner. In 2004, she joined EveryChild India as the Head Office Accountant. Since then she has been managing the organisation’s accounts and streamlining into handling the organisation’s partners project accounts. Having been with EveryChild India since its inception, Medini has seen the organisation grow from infancy into adulthood. A mother of two, Medini loves to play with her children and make handicraft items in her free time.
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| Mohammed Qutubuddin | |
| Nima Lama | |
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Nima has been in charge of security at CIS since 2015. He maintains the daily staff register and provides assistance to the administration team. Prior to CIS, Nima worked as a security person at a car parking solution. |
| Nisha Saral | |
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Nisha Saral is the Delhi office Administrator. She handles the accounts and all events organised by CIS at Delhi. She has a working experience of more than 12 years in various NGO’s. She is currently pursuing MBA from Narsee Monji University. |
| Velankanni Royson | |
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Royson is the Office Assistant in the Bangalore office. He assists the administration department in organising events, takes videos of the events, uploads them to the CIS website, Blip TV, YouTube, etc.
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Details about former CIS staff here
