Dr. Sanjaya Mishra
Director, CEMCA

Dr. Sanjaya Mishra joined COL as Director of the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) on 1 July 2012.Dr. Mishra is a leading scholar in open, distance and online Learning in Asia. Most recently, he was Programme Specialist (ICT in Education, Science and Culture) at UNESCO, Paris.

Dr. Mishra has over 18 years of experience in design, development and management of open and distance learning programmes. With a blend of academic and professional qualifications in library and information science, distance education, television production and training and development, he has been promoting the use of educational multimedia, eLearning and use of open educational resources (OER)and open access to scientific information around the world and, in particular, Asia. During his service in different capacities at the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), amongst many innovative activities and programmes, he developed the successful OER-based one-year Post-Graduate Diploma in eLearning.

As a staff developer and trainer, Dr. Mishra has received the ISTD-Vivekanand National Award for Excellence in Human Resource Development and Training in 2007, and has facilitated over 100 training sessions in over 12 countries. He has contributed over 200 publications as books, chapters, journal papers, conference presentations, book reviews and distance learning materials. Most recently, at UNESCO, he facilitated the adoption of open access to scientific information and research. Dr. Mishra has also previously served as Assistant Regional Director of one of IGNOU's Regional Centres and as a Programme Officer at CEMCA (2001-2003).

Mr. R. Thyagarajan joined CEMCA, New Delhi on February 01, 2011 as the Head, Administration & Finance for CEMCA. He previously worked as the Deputy Registrar, Establishment of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) joined the service in Indian Audit & Accounts Department in 1979 and worked as Faculty Member in National Academy of Audit & Accounts, Shimla in 1993. He assumed the charge of Assistant Registrar in 1993 in IGNOU and Deputy Registrar since July 2005.

During his service in IGNOU, he associated himself with a World Bank project, Distance Education Programme - District Primary Education Programme for about five years as Administrative Cum Finance Officer. He worked as Finance Officer of Institute of Applied Manpower Research, Planning Commission, Government of India for two years. He was associated with Staff Selection Commission, Government of India, a premier recruitment agency for Government organizations for two years. He has contributed substantially in the field of Administration, Human Resource Development and Finance over a period of 30 years.

Rukmini Vemraju comes to CEMCA as Programme Officer from TALEEM Research Foundation, Ahmedabad, a literary, scientific educational society and trust engaged in social science, media and educational technology research. With a background in communication and educational technology.

Vemraju brings with her a varied experience in educational technology design, development and research. She has a masters in Communication and Journalism from Osmania University, Hyderabad and about twenty years of varied experience in the field of communication spanning advertising, creative writing, educational product development design., research and project management.

Vemraju is a keen learner of Indian languages, a movie buff and enjoys Indian classical music and Urdu ghazals.

Dr. Nutan Bharati joins CEMCA, as programme Officer Education, on February 01, 2012.

Dr. Bharati started her career as a Research Scientist with the Consortium for Educational Communication (http://www.cec-ugc.org), India in 1995 and later joined the Faculty of Education, University of Delhi as a Lecturer. In the recent years she has been working as an Associate Professor with the School of Distance Learning at the NMIMS University(http://nmims.edu), MuDr. Nutan Bharatimbai, and as an Expert with MKCL, Pune (http://www.mkcl.org/net). Since 2009, she has worked as Associate Professor with NIIT Ltd., New Delhi. 

She has presented her views across seminars and conferences about realizing optimization of ICT for quality education. Capacity building through infrastructure development, programme design, team development and innovative initiatives has been long lasting perspective in realizing synergy across disciplines.

She hopes to bring together learning minds and e-resources through open channels for communities growing and supported with organizational zeal

Ms. Monica Sharma, Administrative Assistant