Home Institution USA: At-Large

Sumukhi Prasad

Sumukhi Prasad received her BS in environmental engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. There, she conducted research on the intake by minority communities of the primary and secondary particulate matter emitted by the landfills in Los Angeles, California. After winning the Environmental Engineers of the Future (E2F) scholarship, she was funded by a consortium of companies to pursue an MS in environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. During her MS, in continuation of her undergraduate research in environmental justice, Sumukhi had the opportunity to draft a public comment for the Union of Concerned Scientists regarding the tightening of National Ambient Air Quality Standards.

While completing her MS coursework, she interned for an environmental engineering firm, CDM Smith, where she supported USAID’s efforts in water and infrastructure rehabilitation in Lebanon. She continued with this project after her MS and worked full time at CDM Smith for a year. Eager to conduct research to address air pollution disparities in the United States, she started her PhD in environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Sumukhi’s research at UC Berkeley aims to quantify the spatial and temporal variability in air pollution personal exposure, specifically from the refineries in Martinez, California. She is collaborating with a grassroots advocacy group called Healthy Martinez to hold refineries accountable for air pollution violations in the Martinez community. While her research interests lie at the intersection of air quality, public health, policy, and air pollution exposure monitoring, Sumukhi also has extensive experience in working alongside communities and conducting community-based participatory research.

Sumukhi’s Fulbright-Nehru project is using a novel spatiotemporal personal exposure framework to analyze the emission sources that drive space–time variability in PM2.5 exposures among adults in Mumbai, India. With a collection of GPS locations and measurements, the study is attributing personal exposures to their respective locations using a technique involving density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise. Using the knowledge of Mumbai’s source locations, the aim is to identify the sources that are more fractionally contributing to PM2.5 personal exposures.

Pirawat Punyagupta

Putt Punyagupta graduated from Yale University with a BA in history and South Asian studies. A two-time U.S. State Department critical language scholar, he is proficient in Chinese, Hindi, Lao, Persian, Prakrit, Sanskrit, Tamil, Thai, and Urdu, and is presently learning Bengali and Russian. He has worked for Yale’s Program in Iranian Studies as well as the Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. He has also conducted research for the Stimson Center, a U.S. nonprofit that aims to enhance international peace and security through analysis and outreach. Besides, he has taken part in symposia at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies. Putt has also supported heritage conservation activities. Prior to Fulbright, he was an open-source analyst in Washington, D.C.

Putt’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the history of delimitation in India. It is investigating the process’ original design elements while examining the intentions of past delimitation commissions and their attempts to ensure neutrality. It is also studying the responses of political parties and rationales behind the federal- and state-level freezes that took place in 1971 and 2002. The project is primarily relying on archival materials housed in Delhi, but is also consulting collections in relevant regional centers such as Chennai and Mumbai. Overall, the project aims to shed light on the underlying architecture that sustains India’s vibrant democracy.

Shagun Gandhi

Shagun Gandhi is a 2025 graduate of Georgetown University, where she earned her BSc in human science with a minor in disability studies. Her academic and professional interests lie at the intersection of oncology, public health, and psychosocial care. As a medical scribe at George Washington University’s Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery Department, she works closely with surgeons, speech pathologists, and patients, which has deepened her understanding of the lived experience of head and neck cancer survivors. She is concurrently engaged in molecular genetics research at Georgetown, where she investigates DNA double-strand break repair mechanisms that contribute to genome instability and cancer. Her work contributed to a peer-reviewed publication in PLOS Genetics.

Shagun was selected as a Laidlaw Scholar and a SMURF Fellow through which she conducted independent research, mentored younger scholars, and presented findings at national conferences. Her leadership also extended to service initiatives, including her role as president of the Georgetown University Oncology Patient Support (GU-OPS) group, which works to improve the quality of life of patients at the Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center. These experiences allowed her to develop expertise in both qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, as well as gave her a multidimensional perspective on cancer care delivery.

Her broader interests include global oncology, disability advocacy, and medical humanities. She is passionate about building bridges between clinical medicine and research, with the ultimate goal of becoming a physician-scientist dedicated to improving survivorship outcomes for underserved populations.

Shagun’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is investigating the psychosocial experiences of head and neck cancer survivors in India. Partnering with the Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai and the Government Cancer Hospital in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra, she is conducting focus group discussions and interviews with survivors to explore themes such as emotional well-being, social support, and barriers to rehabilitation. Using thematic analysis and the NVivo software, she aims to identify culturally specific survivorship needs and thus inform patient-centered care models. Her work will generate actionable insights for oncology providers and also contribute to the development of long-term psychosocial support frameworks for cancer survivors in India.

Brinda Gaitonde Nayak

Ms. Brinda Gaitonde Nayak works remotely as a consultant writing nomination dossiers and site management plans for World Heritage Sites in India while being based in USA. She is also the co-founder of The Bombay Heritage Walks, an organization that undertakes architectural walking tours in Mumbai. She holds a master’s in architectural conservation from Sir J.J. College of Architecture and a bachelor’s from the Academy of Architecture, both in Mumbai. After staying away from architecture for several years, Ms. Nayak decided to relearn the profession by completing the George Mason University’s graduate certificate program in digital history, which was where her vision for the Practical Preservation Series took shape. She has written several articles, co-authored papers and other publications, as well as written a book of historical fiction titled The Path. She is currently pursuing her PhD in conservation studies from the University of York, UK.

Ms. Nayak has won several prestigious grants that include the Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship, library research grants from Getty Foundation and Duke University, and has also received the National Diversity Scholar award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Besides, her work on restoring buildings in India have won several UNESCO Asia-Pacific awards.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Nayak, who also teaches an undergraduate elective course, Conservation Basics, in a hybrid format at the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai, is developing this course for broader applicability in other areas in India to promote greater involvement of emerging professionals in the field of historic preservation. The course is also introducing to the students current digital tools in documentation and preservation.

Mondira Ray

Dr. Mondira Ray is a pediatrician and aspiring health informatician. After studying economics and religion at Swarthmore College, her fascination with human behavior and societal structures culminated in a career path to medicine. She completed the pre-medical requirements at Bryn Mawr College’s Postbaccalaureate Pre-Medical Program, received her Doctor of Medicine (MD) degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and recently graduated from pediatric residency at the University of Washington in 2022. Through several prestigious research training awards, she has developed expertise in computational biology and data science, and is passionate about improving the accessibility and usability of health data to improve the health of children, particularly in marginalized communities. After her Fulbright-Nehru project, she plans to attend a fellowship in Clinical Informatics.

Although India has made progress in improving its staggering rates of maternal and child mortality and morbidity, wide regional variation remains. Key to addressing these disparities is the digitalization of health records. At this time, only a fraction of primary care centers in India uses an electronic health record (EHR). The primary aims of Dr. Ray’s Fulbright-Nehru project are to support the continued evolution of EHR and to develop a resource to help community health organizations adopt their own EHR platform.

Mark Balmforth

Dr. Mark Balmforth is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. His work analyses inherited inequality in histories of encounter between South Asians, Europeans, and Americans. His first book project, titled “Schooling the Master: Caste Supremacy and American Education in British Ceylon,” charts the entwining of caste, nation, and gender in American missionary schools in Ceylon and was awarded the History of Education Society’s 2021 Claude A. Eggertsen Prize. Dr. Balmforth’s second major research project, tentatively titled “Buried Legacies: Slavery and Caste in the Indian Ocean,” rethinks connections between enslavement, caste, and migration in the Indian Ocean by tracing the 300-year odyssey of an oppressed-caste Tamil community from the 17th to the 20th centuries. His work has been published in the History of Education Quarterly, Review of Development & Change, CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, and the International Journal of Asian Christianity.

Legacies of slavery shape conversations around the world about contemporary social and economic injustice. Over the last decade, scholars of South Asia have started to consider slavery’s impact on contemporary lives in the subcontinent, countering the dominant public and scholarly reliance upon terms like “bonded labor” or “agrestic servitude.” Contributing to the ongoing global conversation about slavery’s legacy, Dr. Balmforth’s Fulbright-Nehru project asks: what can the history of Dalit dye root-digging communities in India reveal about the intertwined careers of slavery and caste in South Asia?

Nicholas Shafer

Nicholas Shafer is a current Marshall Scholar at the University of Oxford and the Institute of Development Studies, where he is completing graduate courses in modern Middle Eastern studies, international development, and public policy. A former desk officer covering Yemen and the Gulf with the U.S. Agency for International Development, Nicholas has spent the past five years living and working across Europe, the Middle East, and in Washington, D.C. at the intersection of international development and foreign affairs from various vantage points, including the U.S. policy community, INGOs, and a fintech startup in London. His research principally examines the dynamics of rising powers in the international system, with a regional focus on the Middle East and Indian Ocean community. Nicholas has also written on the adoption and deployment of decentralized currencies in fragile state environments such as Lebanon.

A native of Silicon Valley and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, with a BA in anthropology, Arabic, and public policy, Nicholas plans to continue into a career in foreign policy and public service. He is also a Boren Scholar and John Gardner Fellow; besides, he co-leads the mentorship program for the Community College Global Affairs Fellowship funded by the Gates Foundation which provides community college students with the resources and networks they need to reach their full potential in foreign affairs, public service, and the world of fellowships and scholarships.

For his Fulbright-Nehru fellowship, Nicholas is exploring the spectrum of opinions amongst Indian foreign policy actors on the utility of extra-regional alliances to achieving India’s foreign policy priorities in four key areas: energy security; food security; technology ecosystems; and national security. In a more contentious and complicated geopolitical environment, he is studying current and next-gen perspectives on alliances and approaches to foreign affairs to navigate the early 21st century. His project is also focusing explicitly on the emerging mini-lateral relationships and collaborations, including the I2U2 Group and the Quad, as well as on broader thinking within the Indian strategic planning community.

Lilith Saylor

Lilith Saylor is interested in challenging the assumption that technology and rural spaces exist in contradiction and believes that rural spaces exist as integral, active contributors to the globalized world. An at-large scholar with a background in economics and development studies, as well as family ties in Kentucky’s Appalachian region, Lilith is both excited by and critical of technology’s role in rural development. She graduated from Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2020, with majors in economics, political science, and international relations. She went on to work in startups as one of the founding team members of BioSolution Designs, and also wrote critically on biometric technology and its political and socioeconomic entanglements in her paper, “Suspicion Encoded: Women of Color and Biometric Technology in the United States”, which was published by California Polytechnic State University’s sprinkle journal. She has also spoken on the importance of building technology by considering the right to privacy, in her workshop, “Built to Protect”, at Technica Hackathon 2021 and TechTogether Atlanta 2022.

Lilith’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the factors influencing active rural digital engagement by comparing the interests, needs, and values of smallholder family farms in Karnataka to the digital technologies they consume. Bengaluru’s digital agritech startups depend on their ability (and obligation) to engage with smallholders as decision-making consumers, thereby giving researchers an unprecedented chance to reevaluate existing frameworks for encouraging rural digital participation. While exploring the mutual influences between smallholder family farms and digital technology, Lilith’s project is also highlighting the ways that rural regions are shaping their own digital future with their unique concerns, interests, and economic decisions.

Kasey Jacob

Kasey Jacob earned her bachelor’s degree in anthropology and sociology, with minors in gender, sexuality, and women’s studies, and Asian, Middle Eastern studies from The State University of New York at Cortland, New York.

In her undergraduate career, Kasey participated in her university’s study abroad program in Mangaluru, India. During this program, Kasey took sociology and religion courses at St. Aloysius College. She also completed an internship at Prajna Counseling Centre, a non-government organization involved in supporting, educating, and housing children from various challenging backgrounds. Kasey’s responsibilities as an intern included providing after-school support for youth and gathering qualitative data for the center’s reporting purpose.

Following her return from India, Kasey earned her remaining course credits through an internship at West Hill Refugee Welcome Center in Albany, New York. In order to assist in the long-term transition needs of refugee and immigrant families from Afghanistan, Sudan, and Burma, Kasey led a number of youth programs to support the social, academic, and personal growth of adolescents.

After graduation, Kasey was hired as a program coordinator at West Hill Refugee Welcome Centre. In this full-time role, she coordinates adult English-language courses for single mothers; recruits, trains, and supervises university-level interns and volunteers; supports additional adult and youth programming; and evaluates program effectiveness.

Kasey is passionate about immigrant and refugee support services, community building, and advocating for accessible and equitable educational opportunities for migrant and displaced youth. After completion of her Fulbright-Nehru scholarship award, Kasey hopes to earn a master’s in educational policy and leadership.

Kasey’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is implementing a peer-mentorship program for female adolescents so that they make a successful and stable transition into adulthood. Her research involves a group of female college students and a female adolescent group. The goal of the research is to connect the adolescent group to local organizations as well as develop several programs that support their social, academic, and personal growth.

Esmeralda Goncalves

Esmeralda Goncalves is an apparel designer who studied at Rhode Island School of Design. Her studies were inspired by the conviction that fashion is a work of art and that each garment is a performance and something to look closer at. While working at Hasbro and Cashmerrette, she found her love for woman’s design driving her to focus on women’s studies. This soon led her to work at McCann Erickson. During her time there, she learnt the value of minor details, and uses that lesson in her work today. Whether it is traveling to learn at leather tanneries or learning the indigenous textile techniques of Mexico, no detail is ever too small for her to not find beauty in.

Esmeralda’s Fulbright-Nehru project is researching Phulkari, an endangered embroidery tradition found only in Punjab, India. This tradition has been passed down from mother to daughter for generations, thereby carrying with it familial stories. Esmeralda is taking a Punjabi research course to be able to communicate with the woman she is working with. At Panjab University, she is working with the curatorial staff to learn about all the extinct techniques in embroidery’s history. Following this, she is set to have a hands-on experience in the art of making Phulkari.