Home Institution India: Banaras Hindu University

Samir

Mr. Samir is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi. He balances his academic research with his professional role as an English Language Educator at Planet Spark, Varanasi, focusing on facilitating interactive, student-centered learning through digital tools and collaborative classroom strategies.

Samir’s academic journey is rooted in BHU, where he completed his MA and BA in English literature. His academic excellence is underscored by various recognitions, including the Junior Research Fellowship awarded by the UGC-NTA in 2025, qualifying for the National Eligibility Test in 2024, and clearing the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering in 2024.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Samir is teaching Hindi and refining his teaching methodologies. He is eager to contribute to cross-cultural exchange and pedagogical innovation. He looks forward to bridging academic insights from his research in folk literature and performance studies with the dynamic environment of the FLTA program.

Aabha Sharma

Ms. Aabha Sharma is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. Her research examines spatial dynamics with a critical focus on marginalized voices, a theme she has explored through presentations at various national and international conferences and publications in reputable academic journals.

Aabha has taught an ability enhancement course for undergraduate students, refining their communication skills through practical activities and theoretical understanding. Her pedagogical approach spans instructional design and classroom teaching. She has also worked as a teaching assistant to develop a module for the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning in collaboration with the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Additionally, she qualified for the National Eligibility Test and was subsequently awarded a research fellowship in English.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Aabha is teaching Hindi. Along with fostering cross-cultural understanding through education, she is sharing stories and building bridges while learning from the diverse campus community. Driven by the belief that the richest learning happens when cultures meet, she aims to use global perspectives in the creation of harmonious and inclusive spaces.

Ananya Mishra

Ms. Ananya Mishra is a PhD candidate in English at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, working in the areas of life writing, gender, and class. She has taught English language and literature at postgraduate, undergraduate, and middle school levels, and currently teaches a diploma course in translation. Fluent in Hindi and English, with beginner-level proficiency in French, she brings a multilingual and multicultural approach to her teaching. She enjoys engaging with music, cinema, theatre, and art, and loves playing the guitar. She is deeply passionate about exploring local and global cultures and aims to explore cross-cultural dialogues between India and the US.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the Michigan State University, Ananya is not only representing and communicating the rich and pluralistic culture of India but also immersing herself in the diverse traditions, histories, and lived experiences of American society. She believes that the medium of teaching and learning in and beyond classrooms can be an effective approach to building such cultural bridges.

Nijesh P

Mr. Nijesh P is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geology, Centre for Advanced Study, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Nijesh specializes in hydrogeology. He is well-versed in hydrological field investigation, hydrogeochemical analysis, hydrogeochemical modelling, remote sensing and GIS, mineral identification and exploration, and geophysical survey. He has published papers in various reputed national and international journals. The most recent one deals with the study of isotopic characteristics and water quality with emphasis on fluoride in the water-scarce Lalitpur district of the Bundelkhand region in India.

Nijesh holds a master’s degree in Applied Geology from Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he passed with first class. He has worked as a Junior Research fellow at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, before enrolling into his doctorate program. He is a hodophile and loves to explore new destinations. He also has a keen interest in music and is an amateur guitarist.

Nijesh is pursuing a doctoral program on “Hydrogeological and Isotopic evolution of springs and their management strategies in a micro watershed of Kosi River basin at Kumaun Lesser Himalaya Uttarakhand, India.” He is widening his research data and inferences further at Penn State University through the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship. The research opens a new door toward the methodologies and parameters used in hydrogeology for the study of springs.

Priyanka Chakraborty

Ms. Priyanka Chakraborty is a PhD candidate in the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. She has submitted her doctoral thesis, which explores the pluralities of Tibetan identity and their articulation in contemporary Tibetan literature. She completed her master’s in English and Comparative Literature from Pondicherry University. She also holds a master’s degree in women and gender studies. She has presented her works in various international conferences and has been awarded best paper in two events. Last year, she attended the summer training school organized by Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on the Integration of Migrants in Europe at University of Tuscia, Italy. Her recent publication is a study of the journeys of texts and humans from India to Tibet.

Ms. Chakraborty has taught undergraduate and postgraduate students in two Banaras Hindu University affiliated colleges. As a faculty of English literature, she has taught several courses on poetry, drama, fiction, translation studies, gender studies and language. She regularly engaged her students in various academic and cultural activities. She is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Chakraborty will teach Hindi at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. She will develop language adaptability of students through language usage in their respective cultural environment and uses blended methods of language teaching. As a cultural ambassador she will use every opportunity to familiarize the students with her culture while developing their language skills. She believes in an equal, inclusive, and multicultural society and preaches the goal of a symbiotic, holistic and eco-friendly existence.

Suparna Basu

Dr. Suparna Basu obtained BSc (Hons.) in Statistics from University of Calcutta in 2011, M.Sc. in Statistics from Banaras Hindu University in 2013. She obtained PhD in statistics in the 2018 from Banaras Hindu University under the supervision of Prof. Sanjay K. Singh. She was awarded with the BHU-CRET Fellowship, UGC-NET Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) and BSR-JRF during her PhD, although she had availed only the first two. Her thesis work was directed towards estimation techniques for various Time censored situations encountered in life-testing problems for two heavy-tailed distributions. Her research works have been published in journals of international repute. Dr. Basu has served as an Assistant Professor in the University of Burdwan during Feb. 2016 – Dec. 2019 and taught several courses to M.Sc. (Statistics) students, in addition to administrative and research endeavors. Thereafter, she joined Banaras Hindu University and has been actively involved in teaching, research and administration. She was awarded with the IOE-BHU, start-up grant of Rs. 6 lakhs in July, 2020.

Location-shifted Weibull, Gamma and Generalized exponential distributions, fails to meet an important regularity condition of the support being independent of unknown parameters. This impedes derivation of estimation techniques, especially those based on likelihood function like globally consistent estimators for complete/censored situation or any testing criterion to discriminate suitability of two competing models. Dr. Basu would explore some robust statistical estimation techniques for such non-regular distributions and illustrate its applicability on real data sets during her postdoctoral stint supported by the Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.

Vivek Singh

Dr. Vivek Singh is Assistant Professor at the Department of English, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He has taught several courses in English literature, language, and cultural studies at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels; and has taught research writing to Ph.D. scholars. He has also taught at the Department of English, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. After pursuing his M.Phil. from Pondicherry University, Puducherry, Dr. Singh joined EFL University, Hyderabad to complete his doctorate. His research interests include disability studies, cultural studies, English language teaching, and critical humanities.

Dr. Singh has delivered more than 20 invited lectures on various topics and published more than ten articles and academic papers. He has edited a book titled The Crisis of Humanity and his forthcoming books are in two languages: The Discourse of Disability: Indian Perspectives (English) and Post-truth (Hindi). For excellence in research, he received a DAAD fellowship.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Dr. Singh is teaching Hindi at Mississippi Valley State University, Mississippi. He is also studying the American social and cultural diversity and promoting Indian languages and cultures. In the classroom, he is engaging with critical pedagogy, which insists upon deliberation, critical judgment, and civic courage to celebrate pluralities as the essence of democratic thought.

Anil Kumar Tripathi

Dr. Anil Kumar Tripathi is Professor of Biotechnology and Director of the Institute of Science at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. At BHU, Dr. Tripathi was instrumental in establishing a DST-supported state-of-the-art Sophisticated Analytical Technical Help Institute (SATHI) and a BIRAC-supported Bioincubator for Nurturing Entrepreneurship for Scaling Technologies (BioNEST). Since their inception, he has served as Coordinator of both SATHI-BHU and BioNEST-BHU. Dr. Tripathi obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in botany from Banaras Hindu University and has published 92 peer-reviewed articles. His research focus on genetics, genetic engineering, systems biology, and synthetic biology of a plant growth promoting bacterium. He is a recipient of the prestigious J C Bose National Fellowship in addition to several other national awards and grants.

Shabana Bano

Dr. Shabana Bano is Associate Professor of Psychology at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, where she also received her Ph.D. She is the recipient of a National Scholarship awarded by the Government of India, a Shastri-Indo Canadian Faculty Mobility Fellowship, and a Witkin-Okonji Award. Her research investigates social identity, acculturation, mutual attitudes, psycho-social adaptation and intercultural relations among Indian Hindus and Muslims, with a special focus on how traditional Sanskrit and Quranic schools influence the psychosocial development of children and adolescents. Her work includes cross-cultural projects based in Canada, Switzerland and the USA, and she served as Visiting Fellow at the University of Guelph, Canada and Visiting Scholar at the University of Lucerne, Switzerland. She is widely published nationally and internationally. Most recently, she co-edited the volume Understanding Psychology in the Context of Relationship, Community, Workplace and Culture (Springer, 2021).

Dr. Bano’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project investigates the possibility that school attainment has consequences for the socialization of Muslim women’s identity and their psychosocial adaptation. Her project does a comparative study of religious Muslim schools and secular schools in the United States and in India. This project will help promote the development of gender equality attitudes and positive gender identity among young women through school attainment, whether religious or secular.

Sarvesh Pandey

Dr. Sarvesh Pandey is an assistant professor of computer science at Banaras Hindu University since November 2020. At BHU, he has been actively involved in teaching, research, and administration activities. Dr. Pandey obtained his MTech and Ph.D. degrees from the Computer Science and Engineering Department of Madan Mohan Malaviya University of Technology, Gorakhpur. His broad research areas include blockchains, cloud computing, and database systems. In 2014, he secured 33rd rank in the CSIR-NET examination for engineering sciences. Under the CSIR scheme, he worked as a Junior Research Fellow (JRF) and subsequently as a Senior Research Fellow (SRF) during his Ph.D. He has also qualified for the GATE entrance examination in computer science and information technology.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellow, Dr. Pandey will explore two crucial research directions: efficient data management utilizing blockchain technology, and blockchain application in crowdsourcing. As the current decentralized data processing and retrieval landscape is transitioning, his plan involves optimizing blockchain performance, specifically addressing query retrieval efficiency and facilitating rich queries. Additionally, he aims to incorporate access control mechanisms within the blockchain framework. The research outcomes will be seamlessly integrated into existing crowdsourcing applications, capitalizing on the strengths of both domains