Project Staff – CECFEE

Nidhi Sharma

Nidhi is the Managing Director of ISGH, providing strategic and operational leadership to the Hub. She brings extensive experience across strategy consulting, philanthropy, and public policy. Over the last few years, her work has focused on the design and implementation of programmes and initiatives that drive climate, sustainability, and social impact outcomes through science and technology innovation, and institutional and systems strengthening. Over the course of her career, Nidhi has worked with leading organisations including the Clean Air Fund, the AGNIi Mission at the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India, KPMG, and JPMorgan Chase. Nidhi holds bachelors in Economics from Lady Shri Ram College for Women, Delhi University, a masters in Economics from IGIDR Mumbai, and an advanced masters in Mathematical Economics from Toulouse School of Economics, France.

Chetan Ghate

Chetan Ghate has been teaching at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) since 2000 and is currently a Professor at the ISI Delhi Centre. He served as a member of the Reserve Bank of India’s first Monetary Policy Committee from October 2016 to October 2020. Between February 2022 and February 2025, he was the Director of the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi. Since June 2025, he has been serving as a (Part-Time) Member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM). Chetan Ghate works in the areas of macroeconomics and monetary economics, with research interests spanning monetary–fiscal interactions, economic growth, and business cycles, and a particular focus on emerging market economies, East Asia, and India. He is a strong proponent of the field of “Indian Macro”, advancing research that applies dynamic general equilibrium (DSGE) models to the analysis of Indian macroeconomic policy. His recent work examines the determinants of national savings rates, multi-sector DSGE models, monetary transmission in the presence of informal labour markets, quantitative macroeconomic models of fiscal dominance, as well as issues related to green growth and green monetary policy. He is currently the Co-Director of the India Sustainable Growth Hub (ISGH), a joint initiative of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, which focuses on advancing research and policy engagement on sustainable growth. He also serves on the Advisory Committee for National Accounts Statistics (ACNAS) at the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI).

‎E. Somanathan

E. Somanathan is Professor at the Economics and Planning Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi, and Head, Centre for Research on Economics of Climate, Food, Energy and Environment (CECFEE). He is the Centre Director of EfD India and was recently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. His research focuses on the economics of environment and development. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and has taught at Emory University, the University of Michigan, and Princeton University. He founded the Center for research in the Economics of Climate, Food, Energy, and Environment (CECFEE) at the Indian Statistical Institute. He has been Executive Director of SANDEE (South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics), a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC, and is a Co-Editor of the journal Environment and Development Economics.