Padmashree is a leading expert on technology, development and the global political economy. She is currently a Visiting Professor at the South African Research Chair in Industrial Development (SARChI ID), University of Johannesburg, a Professorial Fellow at the United Nations University-MERIT, and the Chair Person of the Technical Advisory Group of the World Health Organisation’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (CTAP).

Her thought leadership pertains to technology governance, development, and the global political economy. Her sectors of work, where she conducts empirical analyses and works closely with academia, international agencies and the policy community to suggest reforms, are: the digital economy (artificial intelligence, big Data and internet of things), pharmaceuticals and life sciences, and energy.

She bring over two decades of experience on these topics having worked with a range of international organizations, national governments and regional agencies, assessing and predicting the emergence of new market segments and trends, current and future competition patterns, and new models of cooperation and regulation in the international economy. She currently also advises the African Development Bank on Industrialization Perspectives for the region, and is a Strategic Advisor to the German government on accelerating vaccine manufacturing in Africa. In the past, she has held several important positions in international organisations, most recently serving as Head of Policy of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

As Co-Director of Global Access in Action, she works extensively on issues of access to medicines, particularly through local production of pharmaceuticals and vaccines in different regions worldwide. As a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, 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 the design and implementation of national digital development strategies; data sovereignty, AI for development, among others.