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Dibyashakti Panda

Dr. Dibyashakti Panda obtained his BSc from Dharanidhar Autonomous College, Keonjhar, in 2014 and MSc from the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela in 2016. He then received his Ph D in 2021 under the supervision of Dr. Bhaskar Kundu at NIT . His doctoral research involved crustal deformation and seismic hazard assessment of the Indo-Burmese Arc region by using geodetic measurements, which has a huge impact on human society. He was also associated with several other research problems, e.g. earthquakes and v olcano related deformation, g reat earthquakes cycles and related deformation process, p late boundary vs. p late interior deformation process, c limate and tectonic interaction, etc. He has published several research papers in a wide range of international journals. He has been awarded the Institute Silver Medal in MSc Applied Geology (2014-2016) from NIT Rourkela, secured the second position in Science Category during Research Scholars Week 2019, NIT Rourkela, and qualified CSIR-NET 2020 for Lectureship/Assistant Professor with All India Rank 1. He has also received both national and international grants from both the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), India, and American Geophysical Union Student Travel Grant to attend the AGU Fall Meeting 2018 in Washington D.C. .

During his postdoctoral work supported by the Fulbright-Nehru F ellowship, Dr. Panda will try to provide a clear picture about the interseismic coupling and earthquake potential along the Himalayan arc by considering dense geodetic networks. The present proposal will also provide a novel method to update the kinematic coupling picture of the Himalayas by inverting GPS-derived velocity fields. Further, a realistic and precise 2D and 3D numerical dynamic fault model will be constructed to characterize the long-term fault behavior and earthquake rupture propagations.

Utpalendu Haldar

Mr. Utpalendu Haldar earned his bachelor’s and master’s in geology from Jadavpur University and subsequently started his career as a doctoral candidate at the Centre for Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is working under the supervision of Prof. Ramananda Chakrabarti and is exploring the chemical evolution of earth’s continental crust. Towards this end, he has been using novel isotopic tracers on unique archives, such as komatiites, loess and glacial diamictites. He has been working in collaborations with both national and foreign universities during his tenure as a doctoral candidate.

Mr. Haldar is enthusiastic towards promoting science in all sections of society and dedicates his leisure time towards this goal. He firmly believes that co-curricular activities help nurture the best in us and has represented IISc in cricket in multiple national events. Thus, he considers the Fulbright-Nehru fellowship an opportunity to learn about and cherish the culture of the American west coast.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Haldar is working to enhance the understanding of crust-mantle interaction and magma chamber processes. He is investigating fluid inclusions in basalts from the Deccan Volcanic Province (DVP) to further his doctoral work.

Koushikey Chhapariya

Ms. Koushikey Chhapariya is a doctoral student at the Satellite Image Processing Lab, Centre of Studies in Resources Engineering (CSRE), IIT Bombay, Mumbai. She is working on an object-oriented deep CNN-based model for detecting selective features on hyperspectral images as part of her Ph.D. research. She is also a recipient of the Indo-French Raman-Charpak Fellowship 2022. She joined LISTIC Lab, Université Savoie Mont Blanc as a visiting research scholar in France to conduct a part of her Ph.D. thesis work. There she worked on a multi-task deep learning model for hyperspectral data for six months.

Ms. Chhapariya received the Prime Minister Research Fellowship in May 2021 under the lateral entry scheme. She completed her Master of Technology (M.Tech) from the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS), ISRO, Dehradun. As part of her master’s project, she developed a kernel-based Modified Possibilistic c-Means (MPCM) algorithm in the fuzzy-logic-based domain to handle non-linearity in data. She was also an intern with the Indian Institute of Human Settlement (IIHS), Bengaluru, where she worked on a data management portal, administrating metadata and web-portal development. Her research interest lies in the processing and analysis of satellite images, such as hyperspectral, multispectral, and thermal data. She loves to travel, explore new places, and read in her free time.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellowship, Ms. Chhapariya is focusing on developing a deep learning-based object detection and feature extraction model for hyperspectral satellite image analysis.

Amit Kumar

Dr. Amit Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Geoinformatics at the Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi. He earned his Ph.D. in remote sensing technology from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra. His research focuses on urban ecology and sustainability, and anthropogenic and climate change impacts on urban and forest ecosystems. Some of his current projects include DBT-Mapping and quantitative assessment of plant resources in Central India; R&D projects sponsored by Space Application Centre (ISRO) under AVIRIS-NG; L&S band SAR-NISAR; GISAT missions; a project sponsored by Columbia University; and IISc, Bengaluru coordinated Long-term Ecological Observatories program of forest dynamics and soil processes developed under the Climate Change Action Plan of MoEFCC at pan India scale. Dr. Kumar is also a member of the IUCN-Commission on Ecosystem Management, South Asia and Global Forests Biodiversity Initiatives, USA, as well as a recipient of Fellow and Young Scientist awards of SSCE, New Delhi, SERB-ITSS, Government of India among others. He has published more than 100 research articles in different journals and books of international repute, including Nature Ecology and Evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Science of The Total Environment, and CITIES.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Kumar is building an improved global forest above-ground biomass map in the Anthropocene using large-scale forest inventory data, high-resolution satellite observations, and machine learning techniques at Purdue University. His research will help in developing strategies to accomplish SDGs 13 and 15, which aim at sustainable forest management, by providing insights into the global carbon budget within diverse forest ecosystems.