Subramaniyan (Suraj) Balasubramanian is a Senior Assistant Professor who has worked at the Department of Speech Language & Hearing Sciences, Sri Ramachandra University, Chennai since 2005.
He completed his Masters in Audiology and Speech Language Pathology in 2005 and was interested in becoming a teacher, but then the cleft team opportunity came along.
“It was kind of an accident that this opportunity came along but I am really happy the opportunity came along and that I am of some use to the community,” he says.
Since 2011, he has directed the community based rehabilitation (CBR) project in a rural district of Southern India, which is supported by Transforming Faces.
He organizes camps, meetings and patients in addition to his clinical work and his role with the E-MPOWER mobile application project.
He presented at the 12th International Congress on Cleft Lip/Palate and Related Craniofacial Anomalies in Orlando, Florida during Session #29 – Standard of Care/Team Care. He spoke about training community level workers and assessing the training process. Suraj also presented on the topic of mobile devices.