S. Muthukrishnan

Mr. S. Muthukrishnan is a PhD candidate in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kanpur, where his doctoral studies are supported by a fellowship from the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Government of India. Since beginning his research in 2022, his work has focused on leveraging metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) to design sustainable and efficient solutions for real-world engineering challenges. His research also extends to biomedical applications. His findings have been presented at national and international conferences, as well as published in high-impact peer-reviewed international journals.

Muthukrishnan completed his BS in chemical engineering with a minor in chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Bhopal. While interning at IISc Bangalore, he developed particle-tracking code to extract trajectories from live video feeds, allowing him to study their kinetics under UV light. This experience inspired his current focus on coding and simulations.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellow, Muthukrishnan is investigating chemical modifications to CALF-20, a major MOF for CO2 capture. His research aims to enhance its CO2 capture capacity in the presence of moisture, a critical challenge for CO2 capture in thermal power plants. He is advancing his expertise in developing precise machine learning-based interatomic potentials (MLIP) to simulate and design optimized CALF-20 variants. He will evaluate these designs through molecular simulations, using the developed MLIPs, to determine their industrial applicability.

Saurabh Singh

Dr. Saurabh Singh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at IIT Kanpur. He completed his PhD at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research under the supervision of Prof. A. Sankaranarayanan, where he worked on problems related to the Riesz mean of certain arithmetical functions. Following his PhD, he held postdoctoral positions at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, under Prof. Ritabrata Munshi, where he worked on delta methods and sub convexity problems, and at Ulm University under Prof. Dr. Helmut Maier, where his research focused on the average behavior of arithmetical functions.

At IIT Kanpur, Dr. Singh works with his students on applications of the circle method and moment problems for L-functions.

As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar, Dr. Singh is working on problems related to establishing sub-Weyl bounds, counting special points on quadratic surfaces, and breaking the Rankin-Selberg barrier for general GL(2) × GL(2) L-functions.

Sushruth Ravish

Dr. Sushruth Ravish is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, before transitioning to philosophy. He completed his MA in Philosophy in 2015 at Savitribai Phule (SP) Pune University and in 2021, he was awarded a PhD in Philosophy from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

Dr. Sushruth Ravish is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He graduated as a mechanical engineer from the National Institute of Engineering, Mysore, before transitioning to philosophy. He completed his MA in Philosophy in 2015 at Savitribai Phule (SP) Pune University and in 2021, he was awarded a PhD in Philosophy from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

Dr. Ravish’s areas of specialization are in metaethics and epistemology. He has published several research articles in reputed international journals, and currently serves as Associate Editor of the journal AI & Society. He has been awarded the Naik and Rastogi Award for Excellence in PhD Research at IIT Bombay (2020–22), the SS Barlingay Prize and the KA Dattatray Prize for the highest marks in MA Philosophy at SP Pune University.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Dr. Ravish is undertaking a comparative investigation of how conspiracy theories, particularly those surrounding vaccines and public health, emerge and spread within the democratic societies of India and the USA. Building on recent work in social epistemology and democratic theory, the research examines conspiracy theories not merely as informational distortions or cognitive failures but as alternative epistemic frameworks. During his fellowship, Dr. Ravish aims to develop a normative framework for epistemic repair and trust-building in conditions of institutional distrust and democratic fragility.

Debabrata Goswami

Prof. Debabrata Goswami joined IIT Kanpur as an associate professor in 2003, became a professor in 2010, and became a Professor with Higher Academic Grade (HAG) in 2017. He also held the five-year term of Prof. S. Sampath Chair-Professorship from 2018 at IIT Kanpur. He has received several awards and recognition for his research, which includes the Hoechst Advanced Technology Division Industrial Affiliates Fellowship for outstanding academic record in Princeton, the International Senior Research Fellowship award of the Wellcome Trust (UK), the Swarnajayanti Fellowship of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and Thathachary Science Award (India). He is a Fellow of Optica (previously OSA), the Institute of Physics, the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. His work in ultrafast optics and light-matter interactions has also been recognized by the 2019 Galileo Galilei Award of the International Commission of Optics. Prof. Goswami has published over 175 research articles in internationally reputed journals, several book chapters, and edited conference proceedings and books.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellow, Prof. Goswami is focusing on advancing femtosecond laser applications for laser machining toward nanofabrication, including additive and subtractive fabrication projects using ultrafast and multiphoton optical processes and thermal dynamics. His research will delve into the quantum processes initiated by femtosecond laser pulses interacting with materials, and this work promises to yield innovative tools and technologies with broad applications across science and industry.

Debapriya Basu Roy

Dr. Debapriya Basu Roy received his PhD degree from IIT Kharagpur and was a post-doctoral fellow with the Technical University of Munich. He is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. His research interests include applied cryptography, hardware security, post-quantum cryptography, side channel analysis and digital VLSI. Some of his notable contributions in the domain of hardware security are efficient implementation of elliptic curve cryptography, side-channel leakage quantification and implementation of post-quantum cryptography on FPGAs.

In the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project, Dr. Basu Roy is aiming to implement and perform side channel analysis of a post-quantum secure lattice-based cryptographic algorithm. Due to the advancement of quantum computing, the security guarantees of public key algorithms have come under serious threat. In this project, Dr. Basu Roy’s aim is to develop a unified hardware implementation of three lattice-based cryptographic algorithms and perform a holistic side-channel analysis of the developed architecture.

Rahul Mangal

Dr. Rahul Mangal serves as an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. He completed his PhD in 2016 from Cornell University with Prof. Lynden Archer, where he worked on exploring the structural and dynamic characteristics of nano-particle polymer composites. After his Ph.D., Dr. Mangal did his postdoctoral research with Prof. Nicholas Abbott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he explored how the anisotropic properties of liquid crystals influence the behavior of active colloids.

Dr. Mangal’s team at IIT Kanpur is conducting experimental investigations on a diverse range of problems associated with soft matter systems, polymers, and colloids. Their recent focus is on the synthesis and dynamics of artificial micro-swimmers in complex environments.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) fellowship at Cornell University, Ithaca, NJ, Dr. Mangal is investigating the synthesis of hybrid self-propulsion of Janus colloids and the rheological impact of active JCs on the viscoelastic medium. Through this project, Dr. Mangal will strive to facilitate the ongoing scientific endeavors in controlling the motion of artificial micro-swimmers in microscopic domains for their potential applications in cargo/ drug delivery, bio-diagnostics, and tuning material properties using active colloids as additives. Dr. Mangal is also set to teach a course on polymer physics at Cornell, aiming to foster a synergy between teaching and research.