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Shreeya Yarlagadda

Shreeya Yarlagadda is a recent graduate from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where she earned a BS honors in neuroscience and psychology, with a minor in medicine, literature, and culture. During her time at UNC, Shreeya was an Accelerated Research Scholar and conducted research across multiple settings, including the Neurocognition and Imaging Research Lab, the Department of Radiation Oncology at UNC Health, and the THRIVE Clinic. She completed her honors thesis on the safety of re-irradiation for high-grade gliomas, and continues to be passionate about the intersection of the humanities and sciences, with a particular focus on quality of life and palliative care.

Throughout her undergraduate career, she engaged with, created, and led multiple student organizations. As founder of Art and the Brain at UNC, Shreeya fostered conversations integrating philosophy, art, and medicine, building metaphors to deepen understanding of neurological illness and mental health. She also founded the Global Women’s Narrative Project at UNC, creating a platform for local stories and empowering change through narratives. Shreeya is also passionate about health humanities, and had authored three pieces for the Health Humanities Journal at UNC.

A Kuchipudi dancer for nearly 15 years, she was a proud member of UNC’s classical dance team, Ek Taal. She views dance as a living connection between her culture and her identity. Seeing herself as an artist, she turns to Indian classical dances and writing as outlets that run parallel to her interests in healthcare.

Shreeya’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is investigating community perceptions about HPV-related head and neck cancers, and is also evaluating the efficacy of existing interventions in India. Her study involves engaging with underserved communities and healthcare workers to build a nuanced understanding of the stigma surrounding HPV. The goal is to identify trends in existing beliefs and guide the development of educational and interventional materials that minimize health inequities and raise broader awareness across India.

Shruti Sagar

Shruti Sagar received her BA in community health from Tufts University. During her time at Tufts, she evaluated a water infrastructure intervention in Haiti, taught health education to high school students through Peer Health Exchange, and facilitated qualitative fieldwork for local health departments and nonprofits about emerging public health issues.

After graduation, she worked full time at the Medical Practice Evaluation Center in Boston, MA, where she contributed to several NIH-funded cohort studies and randomized controlled trials, including one study exploring the association between air pollution and lung function among people living with HIV in Uganda, and another study on the delivery of PrEP and contraceptives to women in hair salons in South Africa. She is a co-author on multiple peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Annals of the American Thoracic Society, BMC Public Health, and Annals of Internal Medicine.

After her time at the Medical Practice Evaluation Center, Shruti attended the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to complete her MPH. In addition to her research, Shruti served as a teaching assistant for MPH courses on epidemiology, implementation science, and program evaluation.

Shruti’s Fulbright-Nehru research is examining intracity disparities in air pollution exposure in Delhi. She is conducting a spatial analysis to identify and visualize geographic disparities in air pollution exposure and sociodemographic vulnerability, and is supplementing her findings with qualitative fieldwork to explore community perceptions of air pollution risk. In order to inform resource allocation and policy development, Shruti’s project is identifying the geographic areas in Delhi that are the most vulnerable to the impacts of air pollution exposure.

Nikita Muthakana

Nikita Muthakana is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, and a graduate of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where she earned a BS in quantitative biology. During her time at UNC, she became deeply interested in both scientific research and education, interests that continue to shape her academic and professional goals. As an undergraduate researcher, Nikita worked in developmental lung biology, studying the role of extracellular matrix proteins in alveolar development through computational approaches. She presented this work in a proteomics-focused talk at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Through these experiences, she has developed a strong appreciation for research and scientific communication.

Outside of research at UNC, Nikita served as an orientation leader for incoming students, coached coed volleyball, and worked as a teaching assistant for calculus, physics, and biology courses. Working closely with students from different backgrounds fueled her passion for teaching and mentorship, thereby strengthening her long-term goal of becoming a professor in higher education. In her free time, Nikita enjoys playing volleyball, making pizza from scratch, and volunteering with a local healthy lifestyle clinic for children. She values all opportunities to form meaningful connections with others.

Nikita’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is investigating apoptosis inhibitor 5 (Api5) as a potential chemoresistance biomarker in Indian patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). She is conducting the project at IISER Pune under the mentorship of Dr. Mayurika Lahiri. The project is analyzing clinical samples to determine whether Api5 overexpression correlates with poor chemotherapy response. By generating one of the first Indian TNBC datasets for Api5, the research aims to support the development of more personalized and genomic-based treatment strategies.

Pranathi Dandu

Pranathi Dandu received both her BSPH in biostatistics and her BS in neuroscience, with a minor in chemistry, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She graduated with distinction and honors as both a Carolina Research Scholar and as a Buckley Public Service Scholar, and recently completed her MS in physiology from North Carolina State University. Her academic and research interests focus on the neural mechanisms underlying sensory processing and predictive coding, and their implications for neurological and developmental disorders, particularly autism spectrum disorder. Given her background in public health and experiences in rural India, Pranathi is interested in understanding how gaps in healthcare access and literacy can create barriers to receiving effective medical care. She is especially interested in the role cross-cultural and global health perspectives can play in shaping more accessible and equitable care.

At UNC Chapel Hill, Pranathi worked as a research assistant in Dr. Hiroyuki Kato’s lab in the Department of Psychiatry, investigating the neural circuits underlying predictive coding in the auditory cortex. Her work involved neural tracing and imaging to study how the brain filters and adapts to sensory information. During her time there, she completed an honors thesis examining topographic projections from the orbitofrontal cortex to the auditory cortex; she also coauthored publications. Outside of research, she served as a copresident for the Biostatistics Student Association and was involved with the American Mock World Health Organization as a DAIS codirector. Pranathi also cofounded SPROUT Nutrition, a community initiative focused on providing nutrition education and support for underserved families, for which she received the Robert E. Bryan Fellowship. She hopes to pursue a career as a physician dedicated to translating neuroscience research into accessible, culturally informed interventions for children with neurodevelopmental conditions.

For children with autism spectrum disorder, ordinary sounds like traffic can be overwhelming and disrupt daily life, yet effective interventions remain underdeveloped. Motivated by this gap, Pranathi’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating whether structured auditory training can improve sensory adaptation in autistic children, reducing sensory distress. Working with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, she is developing and piloting a low-cost, tablet-based intervention and collecting neurophysiological data to assess its efficacy in reducing sensory hypersensitivity and improving adaptive functioning. The findings aim to inform scalable interventions for autism in low-resource settings while advancing our understanding of sensory processing in neurodevelopmental disorders.

Lenya Schmidt-Neuhaus

Lenya Schmidt-Neuhaus holds a chemistry and environmental justice degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her academic and professional interests relate to sustainability. Lenya works in consulting – earlier in transportation planning, now in the clean energy space. As a deputy project manager dealing with energy advisory and environmental, social, and governance services, she manages projects that help clients to reduce their emissions and access cleaner energy. She also conducts policy analyses in this field. Lenya seeks to leverage this experience of analyzing policies and managing project flows to conduct research.

Lenya’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the PFAS that are found in common household products. Prolonged and repetitive exposure to these chemicals can lead to a variety of negative health effects. The research will provide policy recommendations to limit exposure to PFAS, provide existing policy examples that can be used as a starting point to draft PFAS regulations, and identify which key actors have the influence to make changes to the supply chains.