Field of Study India: Public Health

Salom Gnana Thanga Vincent

Dr. Salom Gnana Thanga Vincent (Association of Commonwealth Universities Blue Charter Fellow: 2019-2020) is a Professor at the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Kerala, Kerala, India. She is a graduate in agriculture, a postgraduate, and a doctorate in environmental sciences from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Prof. Vincent worked as Head of the Department of Environmental Science for two terms and as the Director of the School of Earth System Sciences, University of Kerala. She is a member of the Scientific Strategic Board and adjunct faculty of the Centre of Excellence in Microbiome (CoEM), Government of Kerala, India. She is a member of the editorial board of Wetlands Ecology and Management and associate editor for Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science. Her broad research area is the benthic ecology of coastal ecosystems. Her work specifically focuses on the structural and functional diversity of microbes in the coastal environment of Kerala and relates the benthic diversity to environmental and anthropogenic impacts. At present, her research is also focused on the evaluation of environmental factors that influence the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance and the distribution of microplastics.

During her project for the Fulbright Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, Prof. Vincent aims to explore the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) and antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) in microplastics of sewage. The work will contribute to the understanding of how microplastics act as a ‘Trojan horse’ in the environmental spread of ARB and ARGs.

Shreyashi Ray

Ms. Shreyashi Ray is a lawyer and policy professional with experience in health, disability, and queer rights. As part of her work at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Delhi between 2021 and 2025, she has advised union and state governments on legal frameworks for public health emergencies, disability inclusion, and the right to health in India. She has also worked with CSOs and the medical community to recommend policies prioritizing ethical end-of-life care and queer-affirmative healthcare.

Prior to this, she worked with the District Administration of Ranchi from 2018 to 2020 to implement critical health initiatives in under-served areas. During the COVID-19 epidemic, she devised the district’s health and welfare plan with the district machinery and civil society, and established helplines for mental health, domestic violence, and migrant support.

Shreyashi graduated from The WB National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata with a BA, LLB (Hons.) degree in 2016, after which she worked at the National Law University, Delhi till 2018 on the first comprehensive open science report in India.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Shreyashi is studying public health with a focus on health policy and aims to implement rights-based health policies in India that build a culture incentivizing inclusion and sharing of relevant, authentic data. Through this, she hopes to make the public health system in India more transparent, collaborative, inclusive of marginalized communities, and responsive to social needs.

Renu Raj

Dr. Renu Raj is a medical doctor and Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer, currently serving as Director of the Scheduled Tribes Development Department, Government of Kerala. She has held key roles, including District Collector of Wayanad, Ernakulam, and Alappuzha, as well as Director of Kerala’s Urban Development Department. Her work spans governance, development, and public health, with a focus on welfare programs for over 3,300 tribal settlements, implementing the Aspirational Districts Program, urban infrastructure projects under AMRUT, and managing COVID-19 responses effectively.

Dr. Raj earned her MBBS degree from Government Medical College, Kottayam, and an MA in Public Management from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has also completed leadership and governance training at the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration, which honed her administrative capabilities.

Recognized for her outstanding contributions to governance, Dr. Raj has received several honors, including a Good Service Entry from NITI Aayog and the GFiles Governance Award. She was ranked second in the 2015 UPSC Civil Services Examination and featured in India Today’s prestigious List of Doers and Makers, highlighting her impactful career.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Dr. Raj is pursuing a Master’s in Public Health. She seeks to combine her expertise in public administration and medicine to strengthen global healthcare systems, bridge public health and policy gaps, and improve healthcare access worldwide.

Arushi Malik

Dr. Arushi Malik is an Indian Administrative Service officer with over 16 years of experience. She is a medical doctor turned civil servant and is the recipient of a prestigious fellowship at the Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

As District Collector and Magistrate, she has headed the district administration of six districts: Ajmer, Bharatpur, Jhunjhunu, Tonk, Chittorgarh and Dungarpur. She has vast experience in policymaking and program implementation at the grassroots level as Special Secretary, Health; Commissioner Panchayati Raj; and Secretary, Animal Husbandry. Her work as Director, Sanitation (Swachh Bharat Mission) to improve the sanitation coverage of Rajasthan, a predominantly arid state larger than Finland, was lauded at the national level and by international agencies. She created a strong enabling environment and formulated a community-led approach, successfully increasing the rural sanitation coverage and achieving ODF (Open Defecation Free) status, covering over 6.8 million households.

Dr. Malik is the Prime Minister’s Award Recipient for Excellence in Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Deployment Gandhi Act (MGNREGA) implementation in Dungarpur district, with 530 districts competing in the country. She received the National Certificate of Excellence for her work with the Swachh Bharat Mission (National Sanitation Mission). For the same, she was selected for screening for the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration. In 2009, she became a Guinness Book of World Record holder for leading a team of 300 people to plant 611137 trees in 24 hours.

Her area of interest is maternal health and designing effective prevention and treatment strategies to address maternal morbidity, mortality, and low birth weight. During the Fulbright-Nehru program, a graduate degree in public health will offer her a new approach to address the public health issues in India. She is also keenly passionate about global health: emphasizing an equitable approach to health with a focus on socioeconomic health determinants, using past responses to health issues as an opportunity to learn.

Praveen Gedam

A qualified doctor with an MBBS, Dr. Praveen Gedam joined the Indian Administrative Service in 2002. He has held various important positions in his career. Before coming to the center, he served the State Government of Maharashtra in various capacities. He served as the Transport Commissioner of Maharashtra, where he spearheaded a massive computerization exercise. Dr. Gedam has also served as the Chief Administrator of numerous cities and districts.

At the cutting-edge field level, Dr. Gedam was responsible for critical government interventions concerning socio-economic development, including those in public health. He is known for the turnaround in maternal and child health indicators in Latur, one of the most backward districts in the state, due to targeted interventions, systematic medical check-ups, and massive community mobilization exercises. In 2015, he was entrusted with organizing and managing the mega-event of Kumbhmela in Nashik which is one of the largest human congregations on earth. This has the distinction of having zero missing persons, zero casualties, zero outbreaks.

In his role in the National Health Authority, Dr. Gedam is the Additional Chief Executive Officer of the National Health Authority, tasked with the policy formulation and implementation of two flagship health schemes of the central government: Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY), the world’s largest government-sponsored health insurance scheme, and the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM), the mission to develop the digital health ecosystem within India. In the future, Dr Gedam intends to continue working in the field of social development with a particular focus on public health.

Dr. Gedam also pursues his passion for music, hiking, and painting. He has trekked and camped extensively across the Western Ghats and Himalayas and organized numerous cultural festivals.

Rajesh Nachiappa Ganesh

Dr. Rajesh Nachiappa Ganesh is a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry. He works in the broad field of Surgical Pathology with special focus on Renal and transplant pathology, molecular pathology and image analysis. He has been actively working in the field of biomarker research in native and transplant renal diseases.

Professor Rajesh has 17 years of teaching and research experience in the field of surgical pathology after his doctoral degree and has been a faculty at JIPMER for twelve years. He had started the division of renal and transplant pathology services at JIPMER in 2010 and started post-doctoral fellowship in Nephro-pathology. He is actively involved in obtaining extra-mural funded research grants from various national and international agencies and has established a molecular research laboratory which has been expanded for diagnostic patient care with funding from Department of Health Research, India. He is also actively involved in proteomics applications and image analysis in the field of Pathology with several collaborative projects.

Professor Rajesh’s Fulbright project is intended on close interaction with senior consultants in Nephropathology at Houston Methodist Hospital, Texas, to study inter-observer reproducibility in diagnostic reporting of renal biopsies and validate the findings in Polyomavirus infections in transplant biopsies. The teaching component involves regular discussion of the biopsy and clinical findings with Nephrology residents and fellows at the center and is in synergy with the research objective to improve patient care outcomes.

Naveen Anaswara

Dr. Naveen Anaswara is a service-oriented health professional and has served as the District Program Manager, National Health Mission, Kozhikode, Kerala for over half a decade. He completed his MBBS and his diploma in child health from the Government Medical College, Kozhikode, and he holds a PG diploma in health care management from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Dr. Anaswara has led many innovations in the government health sector. He played a key role in the development of the COVID-19 Jagratha portal—a comprehensive IT platform to help citizens gain access to information on the covid-19 health services and support available in Kerala. This initiative earned his team two state e-governance awards. Dr. Anaswara has pioneered several other projects during COVID, such as the first-of-its-kind Tele ICU and Mobile Unit Networks across the district. He also introduced Neo Cradle: A Comprehensive Newborn Care Management System in Kerala. Under his leadership, the Kozhikode district established the state’s first breast milk bank in the government sector. In recognition of his professional excellence, the district administration presented him with a good service entry award.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Dr. Anaswara is studying global health at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. Through this fellowship, he aims to bolster his knowledge and analytical skills in the public health field to work more effectively at the national and international levels.

Md Haseen Akhtar

Md. Haseen Akhtar is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh and a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship. His doctoral thesis focuses on design, development, and deployment of a cost-effective mobile Primary Health Centre (mPHC) for low-resource settings. His research has been published in peer-reviewed international journals, and he has presented at several national and international conferences. He is interested in sustainable and responsible design.

Mr. Akhtar holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, and a master’s degree in design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He was the Gold Medalist of B.Arch. (2015-2020), was awarded the outstanding student award and was the recipient of four consecutive academic excellence scholarships (2016-2019) from the alumni association, RECAL of NIT Trichy. He is a registered architect with the Council of Architecture. He has an interest in design for society and enjoys traveling in the mountains and meeting people from various cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Akhtar is exploring design and development of collapsible sub-systems of mobile Primary Health Centre (mPHC) for low-resource settings. His focus is to design sub-systems that take up the least amount of space and are easily portable by increasing their collapsibility.

Prakash Babu Kodali

Dr. Prakash Babu Kodali serves as an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Central University of Kerala (CUK), Kasaragod. His research is primarily centered on the prevention of non-communicable diseases (NCD), fortifying health systems, and promoting health. He has a keen interest in several areas, including tobacco control, healthcare financing, hypertension prevention and control, and digital health. Dr. Kodali has been an integral part of multidisciplinary research teams studying contemporary public health issues.

Dr. Kodali completed his Master of Public Health (MPH) from the University of Hyderabad, and M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He was a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship in social medicine and community health, awarded by the University Grants Commission of India between 2015 and 2016. Dr. Kodali’s research portfolio includes the study of tobacco usage patterns in India, international comparisons of tobacco cessation behaviors, the impact of tobacco-control laws, and the efficacy of anti-tobacco health education strategies.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellow, Dr. Kodali is investigating tobacco cessation among socio-economically vulnerable groups. His research combines nationally representative datasets, key informant interviews, and epidemiological approaches to develop a comprehensive framework for improving access to tobacco cessation services in the U.S. and India.

Lakshmi Priya Manirangu Sobhana

M.S. Lakshmi Priya, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), hails from the state of Kerala, and is a medical doctor by training. She is a recipient of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Administration for her project Sampoorna which helped reduce childhood malnutrition by 95.6% in the district of Bongaigaon in Assam where she worked as district collector. The project is based on the concept of ‘positive deviance’ and an innovation called ‘buddy mother’ model which is adopted in the national guidelines for combating malnutrition in the country.

Lakshmi Priya has been working in the state of Assam since 2015 in various capacities such as assistant collector in Jorhat, sub-collector in Bijni and Bilasipara, collector in Sivasagar and Bongaigaon, and as State Mission Director (MD) of National Health Mission (NHM). As MD, NHM, she has been instrumental in the reduction of maternal and child death rates in the state of Assam. She is known to be an upright officer who believes in participative governance and women empowerment. She also has the experience of working in the Ministry of Finance, Government of India. She is an accomplished Carnatic musician who has performed in over a hundred venues, including the Rashtrapathi Bhavan, and Indira Gandhi Centre for the Arts, New Delhi.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Lakshmi Priya is studying public health in the U.S., which will help her broaden her vision, and focus further on policy formulation and the smooth implementation of health-related administrative innovations. She believes her time in the U.S. will enable her to become a part of the larger global community working towards the betterment of humanity.