Gulrez Shah Azhar

Gulrez Shah Azhar is a doctoral candidate at the Pardee RAND Graduate School and an Assistant Policy Researcher at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. His dissertation, "Indian Summer: Three Essays on Heatwave Vulnerability, Estimation and Adaptation," focuses on health impacts of heat waves in developing countries.

Previously he was an Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health, part of the Public Health Foundation of India. There he worked on issues of environmental health, climate change, and infectious diseases, focusing on surveillance and early-warning systems. Prior to that, Dr. Azhar interned with the Non-communicable Diseases and Mental Health Cluster at the World Health Organization headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

He completed his M.P.H. through the universities of Sheffield and Copenhagen and the École des Hautes Études en Santé Publique (EHESP) in Rennes, France. He is also a medical doctor with post-graduate medical residency training in Community Medicine from the J N Medical College, AMU, India and fellowship in Industrial Health. He is the winner of the Erasmus Mundus scholarship of the European Commission and several other research grants. He has published in several journals, presented at various conferences including as an invited speaker and delivered talks including at TEDx. He has also offered and completed short courses and trainings in related subjects. His interests are in health, environment, population, and development issues.