Dr.Padmavathi.R is currently working as Professor of the Department of Physiology and Additional Controller of Examinations at Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai. She has held administrative positions earlier as Associate Dean of Medical College and Head of the Department. She obtained her MBBS (1994) degree from the Bangalore University, MD Physiology (1999) from St.John’s Medical College, Bangalore and PhD in the field of Environmental Health from Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research. She is involved in teaching Physiology to under graduate and postgraduate medical, dental and paramedical students for the past 24 years.
Dr.Padmavathi has a passion for teaching and research activities. She has participated in the execution of the innovative integrated preclinical curriculum and formulation of MD Physiology competency-based PG curriculum. She is a PhD guide/Supervisor for 14 doctoral students. She has completed Advanced course in Medical Education. She has been the preclinical member of the NMC curriculum Committee of the institution.
Her primary research involvement has been in multi-disciplinary projects in the areas of environmental physiology & occupational health, in various public health related research projects funded by national and international agencies including the ICMR, Ministry of Environment and Forests, The World Bank, WHO, USEPA, NIH, USA. She is also pursuing research in the area of medical education. She is pursuing research in the area of Yoga in anxiety and depression funded by DST-Satyam. She is the mentor for GHES Post-Doctoral Fellow collaborating with UC Berkeley.
She has received awards such as Saroj Jyothi Award for Young Scientist, Young Scientist Award from Women’s Doctor’s Association, New Investigator Award from ISEE, Vancouver, Canada, Research Publication awards, APPI award for Medical Education and Technology, several best paper awards. She has three copyrights and two patents. She has presented papers in various national and international conferences and has several publications (over 130) in national, international journals, Chapters in book, reviewer of Guyton and Hall, Text book of Medical Physiology.
She is an active member of various professional internal and external committees such as, American Physiological Society, International Society of Environmental Epidemiology, Indian Medical Association, Women’s Doctors Association, APPI, etc. She serves as the resource faculty for BCME, ACME and CISP in NMC Nodal Centre and NMC External Observer for BCME and CISP. She serves as Board of studies member, Doctoral Advisory committee member, Research project scrutiny committee of several external universities.
Extramural grant: Sanction of DST – Satyam Extra mural grant for 3 years. Topic; Evaluation of effect of structured yoga intervention on neurocognitive and stress markers among the patients with anxiety and depression -35,01,340
GHES Mentor: Developing models for estimating Personalized Deposited Dose (PDD) for fine and ultrafine PM among adults of Southern India (GHES – NIH) 42,00,000
Extramural grant: Emodule DST Satyam Validation of E module of Yoga protocol for the patients with Anxiety and Depression 2,16,000
Jiby (2018-2023) – MD PhD ICMR Fellow – Study of inflammatory markers and gentic polymorphism among PCOS patients – (31 lakhs)
Deepika – MD PhD ICMR Fellow – Topic- Study of inflammatory mediators in renal cell carcinoma patients and its correlation to select risk factors (2013-18) (31 lakhs)
Krishnan – MD PhD ICMR Fellow – Topic- Assessment of Heat Stress and its impacts on Health among workers from different Occupational sectors (2012-17) – completed and awarded (31 lakhs)
Co – Investigator – Establishing relationships between select adverse pregnancy and childhood health outcomes and maternal/child exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution
in a rural-urban prospective cohort in TamilNadu, India as part of ICMR Centre for Advanced Research on Environmental Health: Air Pollution – TAPHE study – ICMR – 5 crores (2010 -2016)
Co – Investigator – Evaluating the Sustainability and Impacts of Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Interventions – by Aquaya Institute and UC Berkeley
Saroj Jyothi Award For Young Scientist – National Conference on Pulmonary diseases (NAPCON – 2001),
Young Scientist Award – in Women’s Doctor’s Association – Silver Jubilee Conference held at Chennai in December 2001.
New Investigator Award – by International Society of Exposure analysis and International Society of Environmental Epidemiology at Vancouver, Canada in August 2002.
APPI award – “APPI Award for Medical Education and Technology” by the National Association of Physiologists and Pharmacologists of India– during the APPI Conference (APPICON) held at AIIMS, Kalyani, West Bengal on 30th Nov – 2nd Dec 2023.