Yale University Archives

Sheel Trivedi

Sheel Trivedi is a graduate of Yale University, where he earned a BS in neuroscience and a certificate in global health studies. His professional work sits at the intersection of neurological research and social science, with a dedicated focus on the unique healthcare challenges facing older adults. He is committed to applying a patient-centered approach to medicine, utilizing insights from both basic laboratory science and community-based research to improve health equity.

During his three years in the Cafferty Lab at the Yale School of Medicine, Sheel investigated intact corticospinal tract (CST) synaptic plasticity following spinal cord injury and rehabilitation. Beyond his work at Yale, Sheel is a research affiliate with the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, where he is working on a project exploring the financial planning and life expectations of older adults living with HIV in Philadelphia.

Outside of his research, Sheel led student organizations at Yale focused on South Asian culture and STEM education, and served as a student fellow at the South Asian Studies Council at the MacMillan Center. In the New Haven community, he remained engaged through dementia-related volunteering and community blood pressure screenings.

Sheel’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating the challenges of “transnational caregiving” for persons with dementia in Bengaluru, India, who have relatives in the United States. Affiliated with NIMHANS, the project is conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews with multiple “transnational caregiving units” comprising patients, local caregivers, healthcare professionals, and U.S.-based relatives. By identifying, through NVivo analysis, themes such as communication difficulties, expectational burden, and economic impacts, Sheel’s research aims to inform culturally sensitive care frameworks and contribute to India’s dementia action plans to improve well-being for transnational families.

Avi Patel

Avi Patel is a recent graduate of Yale University, where he studied the history of science, medicine, and public health; he also had a concentration in global health studies. His research explores how cities, infrastructure, and environmental conditions shape human health; it focuses particularly on mobility, climate, and health equity, such as the case of rapidly growing Global South cities, where climate change, pollution, and unequal access to infrastructure increasingly affect everyday well-being. Across his research and fieldwork, Avi is interested in how urban design and public policy can help build healthier and more inclusive communities. His academic and professional experiences span environmental health research, global health systems, and science communication. Through international collaboration and research, Avi hopes to contribute to more people-centered approaches to urban development and health.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellow, Avi is studying how air pollution affects physical activity and active mobility in the Delhi National Capital Region. Hosted by IIT Delhi Transportation Research and Injury Prevention Centre under the mentorship of Dr. Rahul Goel, his project is combining geospatial pollution data with time-use and mobility datasets to examine how environmental exposure shapes walking, cycling, and outdoor activity across local neighborhoods and seasons. The project seeks to advance understanding of how environmental conditions influence urban accessibility, public health, and equitable mobility in rapidly urbanizing cities. Ultimately, it aims to facilitate the building of healthier, more equitable, and resilient cities.

Ray Wipfli

Ray Wipfli holds a BS in molecular biophysics and biochemistry with a concentration in medicine from Yale University. In addition to his primary undergraduate degree, he received a certificate in global health studies through the selective Yale Jackson Institute’s Global Health Scholars Program. He already has over a decade of experience working in global health through his nonprofit organization, Energy in Action, which specializes in youth-targeted interventions in Uganda. Through this organization, of which he is both the founder and the chief executive officer, he has led countless public health interventions concerning sanitation and hygiene, sexual and reproductive health, and prevention of drowning. Furthermore, he has facilitated and published multiple research studies examining health knowledge and behaviors in Ugandan youth. Ray is interested in forging strong international connections to further the mission of health across the world, with a specific focus on youth and non-communicable diseases.

Ray’s Fulbright-Nehru project is to conduct an evaluation of the updated Kids and Diabetes in School (KiDS) campaign in New Delhi, India. The campaign targets the rapidly rising health and economic burden of diabetes in India, home to the world’s second highest number of diabetic patients. The research seeks to inform future health policy related to adolescents.

Shrea Tyagi

Shrea Tyagi received her BS from Yale University, where she majored in neuroscience with a strong focus on interdisciplinary, patient-centered research. Her academic journey bridges basic science, global health, and the arts, with a particular interest in gastrointestinal illnesses and the cultural factors that shape access to care. At Yale, she contributed to multiple research labs. In the Turner Lab, she designed an algorithm using BioPython to identify viral “cheats” in bacteriophage populations and later conducted her own experiment studying their interactive life cycles. In the Anirvan Nandy Lab, she developed a novel video-based diffusion model capable of predicting the quantifiability of each pixel in a frame. She used this model to analyze how
visual predictability correlates with gaze movement and neuronal spiking across different neural populations in marmosets.

She also contributed to medical innovation in East Africa as part of Road2IR, a capacity-building program for interventional radiology, where she led survey-based research to identify
post-training barriers and also designed new hospital documentation systems to support clinical standardization. Her commitment to health equity and stigma reduction is deeply informed by her lived experience with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In this regard, in collaboration with IBD India, Shrea is leading a project to use Bharatanatyam, a classical Indian dance form, as a tool for healing and empowerment among IBD patients.

Outside of research, Shrea was the captain of Yale Kalaa, the university’s premier Indian classical dance team, and a member of both Dhvani, Yale’s Indian classical music group, and Whim ’n Rhythm, one of Yale’s senior a cappella groups. She is also the founder of the AutoKind Collective, a nonprofit focused on storytelling and culturally tailored chronic illness support.

Shrea’s Fulbright-Nehru research is examining how cultural stigma affects access to care for IBD patients in India. The study’s focus is on marginalized groups, including women of reproductive age, individuals with low socioeconomic status, and the elderly. The project aims to identify barriers to care and seeks to support culturally informed interventions in order to improve health equity for IBD patients across diverse Indian communities.

Alexander Williams

Alexander Williams is a joint JD–PhD student in history and law at Yale University. His research focuses on the history of corporate governance, capital markets, labor, and the legal profession in postcolonial India. He is broadly interested in global legal history, comparative private law, and the history and sociology of the legal profession. He has published in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law and the JUS GENTIUM Journal of International Legal History. He holds a BA in history and South Asian studies from Yale College.

Alexander’s Fulbright-Nehru project, “The Business of Law: Lawyers and the Economy in Modern India”, is studying the intertwined history of law, lawyers, and economic development in postcolonial India. The project is tracing how legal professionals and other actors in both the government and the private sector viewed law as a tool which could be harnessed for economic growth, the distribution of resources, and the pursuit of private ends.

Saideepika Rayala

Saideepika Rayala is a recent graduate of Yale University from where she received a BA in history and was part of Yale Law School’s academic program in human rights. Her studies focused on South Asian environmental history, forced migration, and international human rights law. Saideepika wrote her undergraduate history thesis on the relationship between Indian industrialization and nationalism during the 1920s Mulshi anti-dam movement.

At Yale, she served as the project leader for the Lowenstein Human Rights Project’s Crimes Against Humanity mission and advocated for a Crimes Against Humanity Treaty at the United Nations Sixth Committee. She also served as city editor of the Yale Daily News and online managing editor of The Yale Review of International Studies. Saideepika has worked for Yale Law School’s Schell Center for International Human Rights, the International Detention Coalition, and the Migrant Forum in Asia.

In her free time, Saideepika enjoys painting, boxing, listening to podcasts, and trying new foods.

Saideepika’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring how dams came to symbolize India’s trajectory toward freedom, modernity, and development in the post-independence period of the 1940s–1960s. She is conducting archival research and media analysis, primarily focusing on three major dams constructed during this period, to understand the debates surrounding these projects and how the country sought to balance economic development with ecological stability. She believes that studying this period can reveal how dams came to occupy a central role in Indian society and that past projects can inform modern-day dam-building efforts.

Sandhya Kumar

Sandhya Kumar received an MPH in health policy with a concentration in global health from the Yale School of Public Health in May 2024. She was part of the accelerated five-year BA/MPH program and received her bachelor’s degree in global affairs and global health from Yale College. She grew up in Rochester, Minnesota.

At Yale, Sandhya volunteered with the Neighborhood Health Project in New Haven to provide free blood pressure and blood sugar screening at a food pantry and also led a summer international relations and leadership institute for high schoolers; she was also co-president of the South Asian Society.

Sandhya has interned with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau on Population, Refugees, and Migration in Washington, D.C., working on initiatives related to sexual and reproductive health. She has also interned with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance in Geneva, where she worked on routine immunization projects.

Sandhya’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the sexual and reproductive health of women migrants in Mumbai. The existing studies on COVID-19’s impact on India have overlooked the gendered effects of pandemic-fueled migration, notably in the area of sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Sandhya’s project is assessing women migrants’ access to SRH services, including to sexually transmitted infection screenings, family planning, and maternal care. In this context, she is engaging with local organizations that assist Mumbai’s migrant workers, interviewing women migrants, and understanding state and local government responses.