Home Institution USA: Tufts University

Nandini Krishnamoorthy

Nandini Krishnamoorthy received her BA in community health from Tufts University in May 2026. Having grown up in Mumbai and later moving to the United States for college, she is particularly interested in understanding how social, environmental, and structural factors shape health across different communities and contexts.

During her time at Tufts, she explored the intersections of clinical medicine, public health, and research. Alongside clinical work as a medical assistant, she contributed to research projects spanning global mental health, HIV medication adherence, maternal health equity, and global clinical research ethics. As a Tufts Laidlaw Scholar, Nandini conducted a qualitative research project examining mental health in urban informal settlements in Mumbai, India. She has also held research and internship positions with the Fenway Institute, Boston Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Center for Global Health Equity, the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard, and the Tufts University School of Medicine.

Outside of her academic and professional work, Nandini was a member of a competitive dance team and has been actively involved in South Asian advocacy and affinity spaces. She also loves to read, crochet/knit, and sing.

Nandini’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is a qualitative study of perinatal mental health in Mandala, an informal settlement in Mumbai. Building on the work of Partners for Urban Knowledge, Action and Research (PUKAR), a local organization, she is collaborating with community members and “barefoot” researchers to examine how women understand distress, seek support, and navigate care.

Kalyani Lawrence

Kalyani Lawrence is a 2025 graduate of Tufts University, where she studied biology and environmental studies. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of medicine, public health, environmental justice, ecology, and (de)colonial studies. She is committed to producing culturally sensitive work that directly benefits the communities she engages with.

During her undergraduate years, Kalyani sought avenues to unite her interests in health and medicine with a burgeoning passion for environmental justice. She became involved in local and global environmental health initiatives, leading a Human and Environmental Health team at the Tufts Office of Sustainability and performing research for the NGO 1for3 which contributed to the development of food sovereignty and Well Child Health programs in a West Bank refugee camp.

Kalyani has accumulated over 5,000 hours of clinical experience ranging from emergency medicine in Boston to reconstructive surgery and rural medicine in Maharashtra. Through these stints, she has become intent on bringing an approach to healthcare that is culturally relevant, based on justice, and grounded in systems thinking.

Kalyani’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is focusing on Adivasi subsistence farmers in a drought-prone region of Maharashtra. Recognizing that shifting environmental and sociocultural pressures influence the conditions required to sustain health, and that such changes produce complexities difficult to capture in medicalized frameworks, her work is exploring the ways that this community understands and relates environmental changes to their health and well-being. Her research is following a community-focused approach in an attempt to better represent the nuances of local realities. This project aspires to contribute to the preservation and elevation of local knowledge, support advocacy efforts, and provide context-specific data which can inform action.

Roshni Bhat

Roshni Bhat received her BS in biopsychology from Tufts University in May 2023. After graduation, she transitioned from her role as an ophthalmic technician to clinical research assistant at Massachusetts Eye and Ear where she joined the Harvard Ophthalmology Metabolomics in Retina (HOMeR) lab, investigating biomarkers for age-related macular degeneration. In this role, she has successfully presented twice at the annual Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology conference and most recently at a New England Ophthalmology Society meeting. Prior to her work at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Roshni had worked closely with ophthalmologists across the globe to help organize the first Global Refractive Surgery Summit which addressed systemic and specific barriers to accessing refractive surgery, a procedure that can help reduce preventable blindness stemming from uncorrected refractive error. Roshni has also assisted with education research and program design at Tufts University School of Medicine’s Center for Science Education.

Beyond her professional endeavors, Roshni is a lifelong learner who loves to teach as well. She is a classically trained Bharatanatyam dancer, plays tennis and soccer, and is also a trained violinist and vocalist. She is an avid reader and baker who loves to explore.

Roshni’s Fulbright-Nehru research is evaluating the functional vision outcomes for pediatric retinoblastoma patients in order to provide valuable insight into the current standard of care and the efficacy of new treatments. Based in Mumbai, she is working closely with the physicians at Tata Memorial Hospital to assess whether new technologies that salvage parts of the eye are providing significant functional vision outcomes in retinoblastoma patients.

Sarah Pinto

Prof. Sarah Pinto is a Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University. Her research and teaching addresses cultures and histories of biomedicine in South Asia, especially as they pertain to kinship and gender. Most recently she has been working on histories of psychiatry in South Asia, with a focus on diagnoses related to “hysteria.” She is author of three books, Where There Is No Midwife: Birth and Loss in Rural India (Berghahn 2008), Daughters of Parvati: Women and Madness in Contemporary India (University of Pennsylvania Press 2014), which was awarded the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize for ethnographic writing on gender and health, and The Doctor and Mrs. A.: Ethics and Counter-Ethics in an Indian Dream Analysis (Women Unlimited 2019/Fordham University Press 2020), and numerous scholarly articles. Her current efforts consider concepts of the “good death” as they emerge in and beyond bioethical framings, highly collaborative models for ethnographic research and teaching, and writing at the intersections of ethnography, history, and fiction.

During her Fulbright-Nehru project, Prof. Pinto intends to involve several interlinked components: teaching a seminar-style workshop for graduate students, conducting preliminary ethnographic research, and building a collaborative research paradigm for ongoing work. The theme of these efforts is contemporary concepts of “good death” in West Bengal. Amid rapid changes in the Indian medical and legal landscape of end-of-life care, Prof. Pinto asks how ideas about a good death are formed and reformed at the juncture of medicine, law, religion, and everyday life. What does a good death look like in and beyond global bioethical formulations?

Michelle Pu

Michelle Pu is a recent graduate from Tufts University, where she studied biology and child studies and human development. She is passionate about learning how she can best support the neurodiverse and disabled population throughout their lifespan. As an undergraduate student, Michelle worked in a rehabilitation center serving neurodiverse and physically disabled adults. Motivated by this experience, she worked in the Crehan Lab at Tufts University delivering a sexual education curriculum to autistic teenagers and researched how autistic adults interact in intimate relationships. She also worked in the Feinberg Broder-Fingert Lab at UMass Chan Medical School investigating an early-intervention curriculum for young children with social communication challenges. Besides, she conducted a research project regarding electronic communication devices for physically disabled adults. It was Michelle’s experiences as a mental health hotline operator, hospice volunteer, and as a volunteer working with housing-insecure children that shaped her interest in supporting others’ mental health and social well-being at all ages and life stages.

In her Fulbright-Nehru research project, Michelle is investigating the impact of affiliate stigma on caretakers when they disclose their child’s autism diagnosis to others. Affiliate stigma is defined as internalized stigma felt by the family members of a stigmatized individual. While previous studies have established that Indian parents of autistic children may experience affiliate stigma, research has not yet investigated the effects of such stigma. For her research, Michelle is conducting semi-structured interviews with caregivers of autistic children in Bengaluru regarding their experiences in navigating their child’s diagnosis.