Siddarth Seenivasa
Boston, MA| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program |
| Project Title: | Mental Health and Eating Disorders: Improving Clinical Assessment in South Asian Youth |
| Field of Study: | Public Health |
| Home Institution: | Boston University, Boston, MA |
| Host Institution: | Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research, Chennai, Tamil Nadu |
| Grant Start Month: | September 2025 |
| Duration of Grant: | Nine months |
Brief Bio:
Siddarth Seenivasa is a clinical research coordinator and biostatistician at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he contributes to neuroimaging and proteomics research focused on eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS). Siddarth’s academic foundation includes a double major in biology (molecular genetics) and mathematics from the University of Rochester. He holds a master’s in biostatistics from Boston University, where he also investigated the intersection of mental health, bullying, and neuroimmune disorders. Siddarth’s research interests encompass psychiatry, neuroimmunology, and computational biology, with a particular focus on immune system dysfunctions in pediatric populations. He has developed statistical models to examine neurobiological differences across patient populations, most recently patenting a model to distinguish between PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections), OCD, and various eating disorders; this model is currently awaiting validation from a larger cohort. Siddarth has authored and co-authored publications on neuroinflammation, including his latest work exploring estrogen’s role in the mesolimbic pathway in women with eating disorders. He has also presented his research at academic conferences, such as at the Digestive Disease Week and to that of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. Siddarth plans to begin his MD-PhD journey upon returning to the U.S., with the goal of further integrating clinical practice and psychiatric research to deepen the understanding about mental health and neuroimmune disorders.
Siddarth’s nine-month Fulbright-Nehru project is seeking to develop a culturally adaptive screening tool for Indian youth to identify PANDAS, a condition for which no such tool currently exists. Toward this, he is working with Dr. Suvarna Jyothi at Sri Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai, and conducting clinical interviews to evaluate the eating habits, medical history, and mental health of at-risk adolescents. The objective is to create a diagnostic tool that incorporates the sociocultural nuances of Indian youth, thereby facilitating early intervention and addressing the underdiagnosis of PANDAS due to limitations of Western diagnostic methods.