Minal Pathak is Associate Professor and the Academic Director of the Climate Institute at Ahmedabad University, India.

Prior to this, she was a Senior Scientist of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2017-23. She is the Coordinating Lead Author of the forthcoming IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Cities and a Lead Author on the Seventh Assessment Report. In IPCCs Sixth Assessment cycle, she contributed to two IPCC Special Reports on ‘Global Warming of 1.5°C’ and ‘Climate Change and Land’, co-edited IPCCs Sixth Assessment Report. She is also a Lead Author for other global assessments such as the UNEP Emissions Gap Report.

Her research focuses on solutions at the interface of climate and development, exploring how sectoral actions in buildings and transport can deliver multiple benefits. She works with the State and city level actors in Gujarat to find mechanisms to advance climate action. In 2024, Cell Press selected her as one of the 50 Scientists that Inspire for her innovative research on climate change mitigation actions in urban settings. She has co-authored publications in high-ranking journals including Nature Climate Change, Nature, Energy Policy and Environmental Research Letters. She is the Mitigation Section Editor in the journal PloS Climate and on the Advisory Board of the journal One Earth. She was a Visiting Researcher and subsequently Honorary Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London (2017-2026) and a Visiting Scholar at MIT in 2016-17.