Shrea Tyagi
New Haven, CT| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Student Research Program |
| Project Title: | Understanding Cultural Barriers in IBD Care in India’s Marginalized Groups |
| Field of Study: | Public Health |
| Home Institution: | Yale University, New Haven, CT |
| Host Institution: | All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, Delhi |
| Grant Start Month: | September 2025 |
| Duration of Grant: | Nine months |
Brief Bio:
Shrea Tyagi received her BS from Yale University, where she majored in neuroscience with a strong focus on interdisciplinary, patient-centered research. Her academic journey bridges basic science, global health, and the arts, with a particular interest in gastrointestinal illnesses and the cultural factors that shape access to care. At Yale, she contributed to multiple research labs. In the Turner Lab, she designed an algorithm using BioPython to identify viral “cheats” in bacteriophage populations and later conducted her own experiment studying their interactive life cycles. In the Anirvan Nandy Lab, she developed a novel video-based diffusion model capable of predicting the quantifiability of each pixel in a frame. She used this model to analyze how
visual predictability correlates with gaze movement and neuronal spiking across different neural populations in marmosets.
She also contributed to medical innovation in East Africa as part of Road2IR, a capacity-building program for interventional radiology, where she led survey-based research to identify
post-training barriers and also designed new hospital documentation systems to support clinical standardization. Her commitment to health equity and stigma reduction is deeply informed by her lived experience with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In this regard, in collaboration with IBD India, Shrea is leading a project to use Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance form, as a tool for healing and empowerment among IBD patients.
Outside of research, Shrea was the captain of Yale Kalaa, the university’s premier Indian classical dance team, and a member of both Dhvani, Yale’s Indian classical music group, and Whim ’n Rhythm, one of Yale’s senior a cappella groups. She is also the founder of the AutoKind Collective, a nonprofit focused on storytelling and culturally tailored chronic illness support.
Shrea’s Fulbright-Nehru research is examining how cultural stigma affects access to care for IBD patients in India. The study’s focus is on marginalized groups, including women of reproductive age, individuals with low socioeconomic status, and the elderly. The project aims to identify barriers to care and seeks to support culturally informed interventions in order to improve health equity for IBD patients across diverse Indian communities.