As Head of Research, Smriti will act as the primary liaison between LAHI and other stakeholders. As the Head of Research, she has supported multiple mixed-methods and qualitative studies, drawing on her extensive experience training over 2,000 students in leadership, public speaking, communication,  theatre, and debate. With expertise in qualitative data collection through semi-structured interviews and FGDs, Smriti brings in unique insights on contextualised research design and implementation as well as on working with multiple stakeholders, including students, administration, researchers, and practitioners. She has co-authored several research papers on teacher experiences and care-work, AI in the Classroom social networks and extracurriculars, student experiences, and more, which have been accepted at conferences including CIES 2025, BERA 2025, ECER 2025, and ICSEI 2024  (presented). She will lead the qualitative workstream (including designing interview and FGD guides, piloting instruments, training facilitators, and ensuring ethical consent and safeguarding) as well as resource management.