Hyderabad, Jan 22 (IANS) A researcher from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Hyderabad is leading an air pollution governance study on Indian cities, which is part of a global initiative, it was announced here on Tuesday.

Aalok Khandekar, Assistant Professor of Anthropology/Sociology, Department of Liberal Arts, is coordinating on the "Air Pollution Governance Across Cities Study" to characterize how coordination between "understanding" and "governing" air pollution is happening in different cities.

It also supports comparative insight and cross-city dialogue, according to IIT Hyderabad.

Originally, there were six cities in the study with research groups in Beijing, Bengaluru, Houston, Philadelphia, New York City and Albany, funded by the US National Science Foundation, an American government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering.

The study has now been expanded to include Los Angeles and four more Indian cities -- Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune. Research in India is being funded by the Azim Premji Foundation.

"We want to understand how actors in different communities identify problems, produce and use relevant data, interpret and think creatively about that data, and are moved to action," said Khandekar.