Field of Study India: Agricultural Sciences

Sudarshan Kumar

Dr. Sudarshan Kumar is working as senior scientist at National Dairy Research Institute Karnal. He is presently engaged in research related to dairy animal health and production. Over the last 10 years, Dr. Kumar has developed skills in proteomics-based approaches to solve the problems of low milk yield, truncated lactation, mastitis and alternatives to antibiotics in dairy animals. He also develops highly sensitive MS-based methods for the determination of residual veterinary drugs, pesticides and adulterant in milk. He is specialized in molecular cloning, protein expression and purification in a wide range of hosts like bacteria, yeast and mammalian cell which are validated for its function in cell culture models. Recently, in recognition of his work, Dr. Kumar has been conferred the fellowship of the prestigious National Academy of Dairy Sciences.

Currently, his research activities are focused on discovering alternatives to antibiotics. Dr. Kumar’s studies revealed that urogenital tract in animal secrets a large number of endogenous peptides which possesses antimicrobial characteristics and thus keep the organ sterile. However, there are challenges in its clinical application.

The Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Scholar Program involving collaboration between NDRI and Oregon State University aims to understand the mechanism of action behind such AMPs. Specifically, the emphasis is on understanding the molecular crosstalk between antimicrobial peptide and bacterial growth during the tussle to survive and to explore the responsive mechanism of bacteria towards AMPs. In the presence of AMPs, bacterial growth is inhibited. But the final outcome of the battle depends on the potency of AMPs and the SOS response of bacteria. For taking AMPs to the clinical stage, it is essential to understand the SOS response of bacteria. Such knowledge not only helps in the selection of a best AMP but also enables devising strategies to combat antimicrobial resistance.

Devidutta Samantaray

Ms. Devidutta Samantaray is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Biology, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Tirupati. She is working towards unveiling the epigenetic regulation of heat stress response and establishment of plant stress memory. Identification of principal regulators of plant stress response will pave a path towards the development of a feasible system for epigenetic breeding for crop improvement programs.

Ms. Samantaray holds a bachelor’s degree in botany from Nimapara Autonomous College, Puri, Odisha, and a master’s degree in botany from Utkal University, Odisha. She was awarded the Institute of Mathematics and Application scholarship by the Government of Odisha to pursue post-graduation studies in science, mathematics and biotechnology. She has qualified national level competitive exams including Joint CSIR-UGC JRF-NET, ICAR-NET and GATE.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Ms. Samantaray is identifying and elucidating the role(s) of small RNAs in regulating transgenerational stress-adaptive phenotypic plasticity in Arabidopsis thaliana. She hopes to be a scientific researcher in the field of plant epigenetics.

Kiranmoy Patra

Mr. Kiranmoy Patra is a Ph.D. student at the Division of Agronomy, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. His research interests include conservation agriculture (CA), nutrient and water management, and resource use optimization at the farm level. His current research focuses on application of dynamic crop simulation modeling to identify the drivers of long-term CA effect on nitrogen management in cereal systems, with a specific emphasis on maize-wheat.

Mr. Patra went to Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (BCKV), West Bengal for his bachelor’s in agricultural science in 2018 and then attended the post-graduate school, ICAR-IARI for his M.Sc. in agronomy in 2020. During his master’s, he worked on subsurface drip fertigation in a conservation agriculture-based maize system and published his findings in prestigious journals. His master’s thesis was awarded the Best PG Thesis Award by Maize Technologists’ Association of India (MTAI), New Delhi. He has also received top rankings in several national level examinations, including AIR-7 in ICAR-AIEEA for PG (2018), AIR-1 in ICAR-AICE-JRF/SRF for PhD (2020), ASRB-NET, BHU-PET etc.

In addition to his academic pursuits, Mr. Patra enjoys cooking, reading novels and self-help books, watching movies, and traveling to new places. He is also an avid gardener with knowledge and hands-on experience in garden maintenance, nursery management, grafting, and mushroom production.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Patra is working with leading mentors in dynamic crop simulation modeling to further enhance his knowledge of nitrogen dynamics and management under long-term CA based systems. He aims to familiarize himself with the state-of-the-art technologies and tools of the crop growth model DSSAT, and to apply it to a long-term CA dataset acquired and maintained in India through field experiments. This research has potential to open up new avenues for redesigning nitrogen management protocols in CA-based cropping systems.

Aasiya Nabi

Ms. Aasiya Nabi is a Ph.D. candidate at Sher-e- Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Srinagar. Using technologies like Crispr-cas9 to target pathogen effector genes and Transcriptomics, her doctoral thesis focuses on understanding how pathogens modulate the host functions during pathogenesis. She has publications in well reputed journals,and has participated and presented papers and abstracts at national and international conferences and webinars.

Ms. Nabi holds a bachelor’s degree in horticulture, and a master’s degree in plant pathology from SKUAST-Kashmir. She has been a meritorious student during her bachelors’ and masters’ degree. As a student of horticultural sciences, she likes to participate in farmer awareness programs. She is also a nature photographer who likes spending time in nature. She enjoys traveling and interacting with people from different cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Ms. Nabi is exploring the Crispr-cas9, a genome editing tool, to delineate pathogenesis mechanism of plant pathogens. She is primarily working on understanding the host-pathogen interaction to devise viable and eco-friendly disease management strategies.

Prateek Dey

Mr. Prateek Dey is a Ph.D. candidate at Sálim Ali Centre for Ornithology and Natural History, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. Through his doctoral thesis, he aims to assess genomic variations in select species of wild and domestic quails. Utilizing a combination of field data, next generation sequencing methods and bioinformatics tools, he aims to comprehensively map differences amongst morphologically similar quail species at a genomic scale. The findings of his doctoral thesis have been presented and published in various national and international conferences and journals.

Mr. Dey graduated with a degree in Integrated M.Sc. in life sciences from the Central University of Tamil Nadu. He has qualified for national level examinations such as GATE, CUCET and BU-CET with top ranks. Apart from academic interests in genetics, he likes to spend time trekking, birding and exploring serene or unexplored nature reserves. He also has a keen interest in cooking and in reading books related to historical events and personalities.

During his Fulbright Nehru Doctoral Research fellowship, Mr. Dey is studying the demographic history and phylogenetic topology of Coturnix quails through whole genome approaches. He is working on assembling a high-quality genome of Coturnix coturnix, tracing its demographic history through coalescent modelling and generating a species level phylogenetic tree of the same. Through collaborative efforts, the findings of this study will bring forth a plethora of genome based evolutionary inferences that will be of high conservation importance for a wide variety of co-generic species in India.

Ashish Kumar Srivastava

Dr. Ashish Kumar Srivastava is Scientific Officer-G at Nuclear Agriculture and Biotechnology Division of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai. In addition, he is permanent faculty at Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai and visiting faculty at the Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences, University of Mumbai.

His research work is focused on developing strategies for enhancing crop resilience towards different abiotic stresses. The stimulatory potential of thiourea has been demonstrated for enhancing stress tolerance and crop productivity through lab and small-scale field experiments. Further, using the “multi-omics” based systems biology and genome-wide association mapping, Dr. Srivastava has delineated the molecular basis of thiourea-mediated action. In addition, he has worked on peaceful application of radiation and demonstrated that gamma-irradiated chitosan can boost the productivity of different crops under realistic field conditions. He is a recipient of various national and international awards/fellowships, including Young Scientist Award of National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI), Allahabad, 2018; Newton-Bhabha International Grant from DBT-BBSRC, 2018; President International Fellowship from Chinese Academy of Sciences, China, 2016; Young Scientist Medal from Indian National Science Academy (INSA), 2014; Young Scientist Award from the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), 2014 and EMBO Short-Term Fellowship, 2011. He has also edited books for reputable publishers, like Wiley and Springer.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence tenure, Dr. Srivastava is working to reduce arsenic accumulation in rice, using a combination of chemical and genetic approaches. The findings will help in developing arsenic-free rice, which is safer for human consumption.

Tushar Kanti Dutta

Dr. Tushar Kanti Dutta is working as Senior Scientist at the Division of Nematology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Uttarbanga Krishi Viswavidyalaya (UBKVV), Cooch Behar, West Bengal. He obtained his master’s (2005-2007) and doctoral (2007-2010) degrees from IARI. During his doctoral program, he visited Rothamsted Research, UK for 10 months under the aegis of UKIERI fellowship funded by the British Council. He has been a regular faculty member at IARI since the last 12 years. His research interests include investigating the molecular basis of plant-nematode interaction using RNA interference and CRISPR-Cas9 strategies. Additionally, he has characterized a number of novel bacterial toxins from insect-parasitizing bacteria that symbiotically associate with nematodes.

He has been conferred with Associateship from the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) and has received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award (ICAR) in addition to several other young scientist awards from different academic societies.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Dutta aims to exploit a multiplex CRISPR-Cas9 toolkit, targeting multiple susceptibility or S genes, to confer root-knot nematode (Meloidogyne incognita) resistance in model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and tomato via loss of host compatibility. Knowledge gained about the function of S genes in nematode-infected plants can be translated into future research endeavors on other plant-pathogen interaction models.

Anupama Ghosh

Dr. Anupama Ghosh is Associate Professor in the Division of Plant Biology, Bose Institute, Kolkata. Her primary research interests include virulence mechanisms of different phytopathogens and defense responses from the respective host plants. Her research group at Bose Institute is engaged in understanding the role of various molecular players from a biotrophic plant pathogenic fungus, Ustilago maydis, which are involved in the invasion and colonization of the host plant Zea mays.

Dr. Ghosh earned her bachelor’s in microbiology, and master’s and Ph.D. in biotechnology from the University of Calcutta. For her postdoctoral studies, she joined the Department of Organismic Interactions, Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, Marburg, Germany, where she contributed significantly to studies involving functional characterization of secreted effector proteins from Ustilago maydis. She received the DST-INSPIRE Faculty Award from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India and the Early Career Research Award from Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), Government of India for carrying out her research in plant-microbe interactions. Ongoing research projects at her laboratory are funded by Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Government of India and SERB.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Ghosh is studying the role of extracellular vesicles in Zea mays in the defense response of maize towards Ustilago maydis infection.

Ashish Jha

Dr. Ashish Jha is currently employed as Scientist C at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali (2022-2023) and worked as a research associate at Kerala Agricultural University Thrissur (2021-2022). He has an MTech in biotechnology from IIT Kharagpur (2014) and a BTech in biotechnology from NIT Raipur (2012). He is a recipient of competitive national fellowships such as GATE, CSIR-NET and SERB-NPDF.

Dr. Jha obtained his Ph.D. from CSIR-CCMB Hyderabad for his work on biogeography and population genetics of South India endemic and globally threatened yellow-throated bulbul (Pycnonotus xantholaemus). After his Ph.D., he worked on the Kerala Bird Atlas project and studied avian diet via stable-isotope analysis. He is interested in avian conservation using multi-pronged approaches including genetics, long-term monitoring, field-based natural history studies and community outreach.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellow at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, Dr. Jha is empirically testing the core-periphery hypothesis using Nearctic birds as a model system. This study aims to generate empirical support for the core-periphery hypothesis by quantifying external phenotypes and genomic variation across populations in multiple avian species, leveraging the power of museum specimens.

Shikha Dixit

Dr. Shikha Dixit received her B.Sc. degree in agriculture from Indira Gandhi Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, Raipur in 2010. She obtained her postgraduation degree in plant biotechnology from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru. She received an ICAR fellowship during her graduation and a DBT fellowship for her postgraduate studies after securing ninth position in a national-level exam. She received her Ph.D. in molecular biology and biotechnology in the year 2020 from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Her Ph.D. research was focused on understanding the defense molecular signaling pathway in response to fungal pathogens. During her postdoctoral research, she worked on DBT-funded and ICAR-funded projects, focusing on improving tolerance against necrotrophic pathogens by finding unique signaling factors in response to pathogens. She has published her research in prestigious journals and has also presented her findings at numerous national and international conferences. Apart from the academic fellowships, she is also the recipient of the IARI merit medal in 2020 and the ITS grant in 2023.

Adverse climatic conditions affect both plants and pathogens. Given their rapid adaptation ability, fluctuations in the weather pattern provide pathogens with more favorable conditions to thrive and increase the possibility of intense disease breakouts. As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellow at the Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, Dr. Dixit is identifying genes conferring favorable root architecture and pathogen tolerance under the dual-stress situation.