I am a NIHR Professor of Global Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK. I am also the Co-Director of the Centre for Global Mental Health at LSHTM and King's College London. I am an addiction psychiatrist and global mental health researcher conducting research aimed at developing and evaluating interventions for increasing access to mental healthcare in low resource settings. My host institution in India is Sangath, a mental health research NGO, where I am the Director of the Addictions Research Group. I have trained at the Goa Medical College, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, UK, King’s College London and LSHTM.

Along with my research, I am actively involved in the capacity building of mental health researchers and lay health workers in India and overseas (e.g. Nepal, Kenya, Uganda). I teach on various MSc courses (Global Mental Health, Public Health Policy) at the LSHTM, and the Course Director for the annual short course on Leadership in Mental Health in India. I also work actively to influence policy through my roles on the State Mental Health Authority for Goa, State Mental Health Policy drafting committee for Maharashtra, and the task force of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that developed the mental health operational guidelines for the Ayushman Bharat Program.