Field of Study USA: Public Health

Nathan Miller

Dr. Nate Miller is a global health researcher and advisor with over 20 years of experience designing, implementing, and evaluating community health programs across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He holds a PhD in international health from Johns Hopkins University and master’s degrees in public health and international affairs from Columbia University.

At UNICEF, where he served as global lead for community health in emergencies from 2014 to 2024, Dr. Miller led an eight-country research initiative documenting how community health workers function in humanitarian settings, generating evidence that has informed global humanitarian health policy and practice. He also led the development of South Sudan’s national community health strategy, the Boma Health Initiative, now serving eight million people, and developed Somalia’s national community health worker program guidelines for the World Bank. He has held research and faculty roles at Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, and has worked with Save the Children, USAID, and WHO. He is the author of 24 peer-reviewed publications on community health systems, implementation science, and health in humanitarian settings, including a 2026 paper in the Lancet Primary Care on building community health worker systems ready for AI integration.

For the past two years, Dr. Miller has focused on practical AI applications in global health, advising and training organizations, including WHO, Georgetown University, and George Washington University. He founded The AI & Global Health Hub, a resource platform for global health professionals, and is leading a literature review on AI in community health worker programs.

Dr. Miller’s Fulbright Global Scholar project is a five-month comparative study across Kenya, Rwanda, and India, three countries at the forefront of integrating AI into community health worker programs. Through direct observation of health workers using AI tools, key informant interviews with those who design and run these health worker programs, and stakeholder workshops, he is documenting which implementation practices transfer across health systems and which require local adaptation, with the aim to produce open-access guidance for program managers and policymakers worldwide.

Supriya Mahajan

Dr. Supriya Mahajan is an associate professor (with tenure) in the Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, at Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo (UB), New York. She also holds adjunct appointments in biomedical informatics and chemical and biological engineering and serves as director of research for the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology. Dr. Mahajan earned her PhD in endocrinology and metabolism from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, and later completed her MPH in global health and epidemiology from the University at Buffalo. She completed her postdoctoral training at Case Western Reserve University and UB, specializing in endocrinology, metabolism, immunology, and translational biomedical research. Over the course of more than three decades, Dr. Mahajan has developed an internationally recognized research program spanning immunology, neuroinflammation, microbiome science, infectious diseases, nanomedicine, public health, and translational medicine. Her work focuses on understanding microbial communities, inflammation, immune dysfunction, and chronic diseases, with particular emphasis on HIV-associated comorbidities, neurodegenerative disorders, and precision medicine approaches. She has served as principal investigator, coinvestigator, and mentor on numerous NIH research projects and has contributed extensively to interdisciplinary collaborations across the United States and internationally.

Dr. Mahajan has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, nine book chapters, over 95 scientific abstracts, and holds a U.S. patent. Her scholarly contributions have garnered more than 9,400 citations, with an h-index of 52. She has served on numerous NIH, NSF, and the U.S. Department of Defense review panels and is an active member of several professional societies. A dedicated educator and mentor, she teaches graduate-level courses in microbiome informatics, metagenomics informatics, and public health informatics. Her current interests include microbiome-host interactions, neuroinflammation, precision public health, bioinformatics, global health, and the development of innovative technologies for disease detection, prevention, and treatment.

Dr. Mahajan’s Fulbright Global Scholar project is advancing international collaboration to address global water challenges through AI‑driven analysis of chemical and microbial data. As the principal investigator, she is leading a multidisciplinary team in partnership with IIT Bombay, the University of Sydney, and the University of the Western Cape to develop and field‑test an integrated optics-based automated water‑quality sensing platform across diverse sites in India, Australia, and South Africa. The project aims to strengthen global academic partnerships, build research capacity, and deliver a scalable real‑time monitoring framework to inform water‑safety policies and enhance infrastructure resilience worldwide.

Kizil Yusoof

Kizil Yusoof is a doctoral student working under the supervision of Dr. Purnima Madhivanan in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. Kizil earned an MS in immunology and infection from UT Health San Antonio in 2018. Her graduate research focused on the development of point-of-care diagnostics for drug-resistant tuberculosis. Following her master’s degree, Kizil continued working in biomedical research, investigating the neuroimmune mechanisms of chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain.

In 2024, Kizil transitioned into the field of public health where her research interests expanded to cancer prevention, health promotion, and epidemiology. Her current work focuses on understanding the prevention of cervical cancer through community-centered and population health approaches, with an emphasis on improving awareness, access, and preventive care.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Kizil is examining the influence of religious and cultural beliefs on cervical cancer prevention and HPV vaccine decision-making in the urban communities of Mysuru, India. Specifically, she is using a community-based participatory research approach, including focus group discussions and photovoice, to understand how cultural and religious values impact attitudes toward cervical cancer prevention and vaccine uptake. The study is being conducted in collaboration with the JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research and the Public Health Research Institute of India, an NIH training site for global health research. The overall goal is to deploy culturally relevant strategies to improve HPV vaccine rollout and uptake in order to address the 2030 WHO strategic target of eliminating cervical cancer.

Shreeya Yarlagadda

Shreeya Yarlagadda is a recent graduate from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where she earned a BS honors in neuroscience and psychology, with a minor in medicine, literature, and culture. During her time at UNC, Shreeya was an Accelerated Research Scholar and conducted research across multiple settings, including the Neurocognition and Imaging Research Lab, the Department of Radiation Oncology at UNC Health, and the THRIVE Clinic. She completed her honors thesis on the safety of re-irradiation for high-grade gliomas, and continues to be passionate about the intersection of the humanities and sciences, with a particular focus on quality of life and palliative care.

Throughout her undergraduate career, she engaged with, created, and led multiple student organizations. As founder of Art and the Brain at UNC, Shreeya fostered conversations integrating philosophy, art, and medicine, building metaphors to deepen understanding of neurological illness and mental health. She also founded the Global Women’s Narrative Project at UNC, creating a platform for local stories and empowering change through narratives. Shreeya is also passionate about health humanities, and had authored three pieces for the Health Humanities Journal at UNC.

A Kuchipudi dancer for nearly 15 years, she was a proud member of UNC’s classical dance team, Ek Taal. She views dance as a living connection between her culture and her identity. Seeing herself as an artist, she turns to Indian classical dances and writing as outlets that run parallel to her interests in healthcare.

Shreeya’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is investigating community perceptions about HPV-related head and neck cancers, and is also evaluating the efficacy of existing interventions in India. Her study involves engaging with underserved communities and healthcare workers to build a nuanced understanding of the stigma surrounding HPV. The goal is to identify trends in existing beliefs and guide the development of educational and interventional materials that minimize health inequities and raise broader awareness across India.

Sheel Trivedi

Sheel Trivedi is a graduate of Yale University, where he earned a BS in neuroscience and a certificate in global health studies. His professional work sits at the intersection of neurological research and social science, with a dedicated focus on the unique healthcare challenges facing older adults. He is committed to applying a patient-centered approach to medicine, utilizing insights from both basic laboratory science and community-based research to improve health equity.

During his three years in the Cafferty Lab at the Yale School of Medicine, Sheel investigated intact corticospinal tract (CST) synaptic plasticity following spinal cord injury and rehabilitation. Beyond his work at Yale, Sheel is a research affiliate with the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, where he is working on a project exploring the financial planning and life expectations of older adults living with HIV in Philadelphia.

Outside of his research, Sheel led student organizations at Yale focused on South Asian culture and STEM education, and served as a student fellow at the South Asian Studies Council at the MacMillan Center. In the New Haven community, he remained engaged through dementia-related volunteering and community blood pressure screenings.

Sheel’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating the challenges of “transnational caregiving” for persons with dementia in Bengaluru, India, who have relatives in the United States. Affiliated with NIMHANS, the project is conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews with multiple “transnational caregiving units” comprising patients, local caregivers, healthcare professionals, and U.S.-based relatives. By identifying, through NVivo analysis, themes such as communication difficulties, expectational burden, and economic impacts, Sheel’s research aims to inform culturally sensitive care frameworks and contribute to India’s dementia action plans to improve well-being for transnational families.

Pranav Shibu

Pranav Shibu graduated from Johns Hopkins University in May 2025 with a BS in molecular and cellular biology and public health studies. His coursework spanned molecular biology, biochemistry, cognitive neuroscience, developmental genetics, epidemiology, and qualitative research methods, thus building an interdisciplinary foundation for work at the intersection of laboratory science and community health. Currently, Pranav serves as a mid-level research technician in the Shakkottai Lab at UT Southwestern Medical Center, where he investigates KCNH3 ion channel dysfunction in spinocerebellar ataxia using patch-clamp electrophysiology, stereological analysis, and rotarod behavioral assays in mouse models. His research trajectory has spanned three additional academic laboratories: the Lloyd Lab at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine; the Berth/Lloyd Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, where he studied dynactin-related neuromuscular degeneration in drosophila; and the Farah Lab at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

His clinical experience includes four years as a medical assistant at America First Urgent Care in Coppell, Texas, and ongoing work at the Union Gospel Mission Calvert Clinic in Dallas, where he serves an underserved homeless population.

Outside of medicine and research, Pranav competed on the Johns Hopkins NCAA men’s varsity fencing team and coaches young athletes at Go Fence Academy.

Pranav’s Fulbright-Nehru research is examining informal diabetes caregiving in rural Kerala, where India’s second-highest diabetes prevalence places disproportionate burden on family caregivers in resource-poor households. Although 80 percent of this chronic disease care occurs at home, the labor remains largely undocumented in formal healthcare planning. Based at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences in Kochi and working under Dr. Renjith Bhadran, Pranav is conducting trauma-informed, semi-structured interviews with family caregivers, community health workers, and primary care providers across Ernakulam, Palakkad, and Wayanad districts. Drawing on Johns Hopkins public health training and native Malayalam-language fluency, the project will make visible the essential caregiving labor sustaining chronic disease management in resource-constrained settings.

Neeva Sethi

Neeva Sethi earned her BS in computer science and biology from the University of Florida, where she focused on leveraging technology to improve healthcare delivery and access to quality care. During her undergraduate studies, she was a founding engineer on a clinically studied virtual reality application designed for distraction-based therapy, thereby contributing to the development of immersive tools aimed at improving patient experience and outcomes. She also led a health-tech nonprofit that partnered with local hospitals to design and implement engineering-driven solutions to operational and patient-care challenges.

Since graduating, Neeva has been working as a software engineer on Microsoft’s High Performance Computing and AI team, where she builds large-scale distributed infrastructure that powers advanced AI applications such as ChatGPT and Copilot.

Drawing on both her technical background and her exposure to healthcare inequities, Neeva is particularly interested in how emerging technologies can be responsibly integrated into healthcare systems to improve access, efficiency, and equity at scale. She is especially focused on the role of infrastructure, policy, and global collaboration in shaping the future of healthcare delivery.

Neeva’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is examining how telemedicine can be augmented to improve equitable healthcare access in underserved regions. Based at IIT Jodhpur, the project is combining policy analysis through fieldwork across rural health centers in Rajasthan and a comparative study to identify barriers to telemedicine adoption, including in terms of infrastructure, digital literacy, and trust. The research is expected to produce actionable policy recommendations and a scalable framework for inclusive telehealth delivery in India and comparable global contexts.

Shruti Sagar

Shruti Sagar received her BA in community health from Tufts University. During her time at Tufts, she evaluated a water infrastructure intervention in Haiti, taught health education to high school students through Peer Health Exchange, and facilitated qualitative fieldwork for local health departments and nonprofits about emerging public health issues.

After graduation, she worked full time at the Medical Practice Evaluation Center in Boston, MA, where she contributed to several NIH-funded cohort studies and randomized controlled trials, including one study exploring the association between air pollution and lung function among people living with HIV in Uganda, and another study on the delivery of PrEP and contraceptives to women in hair salons in South Africa. She is a co-author on multiple peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Annals of the American Thoracic Society, BMC Public Health, and Annals of Internal Medicine.

After her time at the Medical Practice Evaluation Center, Shruti attended the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to complete her MPH. In addition to her research, Shruti served as a teaching assistant for MPH courses on epidemiology, implementation science, and program evaluation.

Shruti’s Fulbright-Nehru research is examining intracity disparities in air pollution exposure in Delhi. She is conducting a spatial analysis to identify and visualize geographic disparities in air pollution exposure and sociodemographic vulnerability, and is supplementing her findings with qualitative fieldwork to explore community perceptions of air pollution risk. In order to inform resource allocation and policy development, Shruti’s project is identifying the geographic areas in Delhi that are the most vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution exposure.

Harnoor Sachar

Harnoor Sachar graduated from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service with a degree in science, technology, and international affairs, and a minor in biology. Her academic and research interests lie at the intersection of health systems and clinical medicine, and she has extensive experience conducting research in international settings. As a BSFS Summer Award, Barkanic Award, and CRF Summer Fellowship recipient, Harnoor spent two summers in Mysore, India, engaging in women’s health research, which ranged from health hazards faced by female beedi workers to health system gaps in cervical cancer care. She has gone on to present her findings at conferences such as the 2024 World Cancer Congress and CUGH 2026. Harnoor is also a recipient of the Georgetown Medical Humanities Research Fellowship whereby she has been able to bring her love for film and culture into her research interests by exploring the portrayal of motherhood in Bollywood movies.

In the clinical space, Harnoor works as a volunteer EMT in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and as a volunteer scribe at a free Spanish-speaking clinic in Arlington, Virginia.

Away from research and work, she is on Georgetown’s bhangra dance team, and enjoys singing, running, and trying out new restaurants.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, Harnoor is expanding on her interests in women’s health and the sociocultural factors of medicine. She is conducting a mixed-methods study to examine the social, structural, and gendered barriers contributing to rising sexually transmitted disease (STD) rates in Punjab, India. Her research is exploring how stigma, gender norms, and cultural taboos surrounding sexual health and healthcare access shape patients’ and providers’ experiences with STD diagnosis and treatment, particularly among women and adolescents. Through surveys and in-depth interviews with patients and healthcare providers, her work seeks to advance cross-cultural understanding of sexual health inequities and inform patient-centered strategies for stigma reduction, improved treatment uptake, and more equitable access to STD care in high-burden communities.

Aanya Ravichander

Aanya Ravichander is a recent graduate of Emory University, where she earned a BA in human health with a minor in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. A passionate patient advocate, Aanya’s research work centers on applying narrative medicine and patient stories in care settings. She has researched the use of language as a tool for child survivors of sexual violence and worked on mental health care access for both incarcerated and unhoused individuals. At Emory, she worked with laboring refugee moms and supported incarcerated survivors of domestic violence during their parole. A particular emphasis of her work is on how sociodemographic indicators, like maternal education and the Child Opportunity Index, impact outcomes for marginalized groups.

Aanya aspires to be a compassionate physician who accords priority to patient experiences in her care. She hopes to continue to unearth areas of research in the intersections of clinical medicine and the humanities. Beyond her work, Aanya loves to play the drums, hang out with friends, work out, and explore local culture and cuisine.

Aanya’s Fulbright-Nehru research project sits at the intersection of women’s health and cultural expectations surrounding motherhood. She is studying postpartum depression and abuse in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, unpacking how community health workers and mothers respond to postnatal mental health challenges. Aanya hopes to determine the barriers to detecting, diagnosing, and treating abuse and postpartum depression to better serve the vulnerable populations. Using a mixed-methods approach, the project is analyzing both participant interviews and verified mental health scales to assess how to drive equitable, patient-centered care.