Padmashree Gehl Sampath

Padmashree is a leading expert on trade policy, innovation policy, and economic development. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Aalborg, Denmark and a Professorial Fellow at the United Nations University-MERIT. She bring over two decades of experience in policy forecasting and analysis, policy design and implementation of relevance to global and national governance in various sectors, particularly life sciences, digital economy and renewable energy. She has a background in development policy and practice with a focus on trade, technology, intellectual property and competition. On these issues, she has worked with a range of international organisations, national governments, regional agencies and companies influencing policy and strategic decision making by assessing and predicting the emergence of new market segments and trends, current and future competition patterns, and identifying strategic areas of intervention to promote change. Most recently, she has served as Head-Policy of the International Renewable Energy Agency. At Berkman, her research particularly focuses on the ways in which the digital technologies empower and facilitate change at the individual and collective levels. She works on topics such as the design and implementation of national digital development strategies; the regulation of digital competition; the role of digital technologies in developmental outcomes (incl. SDGs), AI and structural inequality, among others. She is also a Senior Advisor of the Center's GAiA Program engaged on issues of drug pricing, digital health and trade barriers for access to medicines.