Host City India: Amherst

Mamatha Gandham

Dr. Mamatha Gandham is an independent researcher whose work delves into the intersection of labor, gender, and social movements. She holds an MA in History from the University of Hyderabad and earned her PhD in Women’s and Gender Studies from Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi in December 2023. Her doctoral research was supported by the ICSSR Institutional Doctoral Fellowship (2017–2019).

Dr. Gandham’s research focuses on the organization of women workers within labor movements, examining how the interconnected realms of production and social reproduction shape women’s participation in these movements. Her work sheds light on the structural challenges and opportunities for women’s labor mobilization in India.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Dr. Gandham is investigating the experiences of women workers in the gig economy. Her research delves into their working conditions, and their efforts to collectivize and build bargaining power. In an era where the gig economy is reshaping employment patterns, Dr. Gandham’s work critically explores its gendered dimensions and the potential for labor mobilization within this sector. Through this fellowship, she aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the pathways for collective action among women gig workers in India.

Anjitha K. S.

Ms. Anjitha K. S. is a PhD candidate in the Plant Physiology and Biochemistry Division at the Department of Botany, University of Calicut, Kerala under the guidance of Prof. Jos T. Puthur. Her doctoral research focuses on cell wall remodeling under arsenic stress and associated functional biology in rice. By employing a multidisciplinary approach that integrates plant physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology, her work will delve into the cellular and molecular responses of rice plants to arsenic stress, with an emphasis on cell wall remodeling. The cell wall serves as a critical barrier against arsenic uptake, and understanding its dynamic alterations under stress conditions is crucial for developing strategies to enhance arsenic tolerance.

Anjitha holds a bachelor’s degree in botany from St. Joseph’s College, Devagiri, Kerala and a master’s degree in applied plant science from the University of Calicut, Kerala. She has qualified in various competitive exams and has published several research articles in reputed international journals, reflecting her interest in plant stress biology.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Anjitha is exploring the key mechanisms and pathways that govern arsenic stress-induced plant responses in collaboration with Prof. Om Parkash Dhankher’s lab. The ultimate goal of this study is to apply this knowledge to develop arsenic-stress resistant rice cultivars, which will help secure food production and safety in arsenic-affected regions. Anjitha is also passionate about teaching and mentoring. In her free time, she enjoys reading, gardening and travelling.

Subhankar Mukherjee

Dr. Subhankar Mukherjee is Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial & Management Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He joined IIT Kanpur in 2019, after completing his Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Kolkata with specialization in economics. Dr. Mukherjee obtained his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Jadavpur University, Kolkata, and worked in the corporate sector for nearly 10 years before joining his Ph.D..

Dr. Mukherjee’s research interests are in the areas of economics of development and applied microeconomics. His research has been published in journals, such as The European Journal of Development Research, Applied Economics, Indian Growth and Development Review, and Economic & Political Weekly. He has also written articles for media outlets, such as The Hindu, Business Line and Ideas for India.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellowship, Dr. Mukherjee is analyzing the factors behind low utilization of crop insurance products among Indian farmers. Specifically, he is focusing on the role of awareness-building programs in improving the utilization rate of these products, and the differential impact of such programs on various caste-based groups and their take-up decisions.

Apoorva Singh

Apoorva Singh is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. His doctoral thesis focuses on understanding the charge transport and degradation mechanisms in perovskite based solar cells and devices incorporating device fabrication and advanced electrical, optical and materials characterizations. Apoorva has published academic papers and presented his work at various national and international conferences. He has collaborated with prominent international research groups and research facilities including ones at the University of Oxford and Soleil French-National Synchrotron Facility.

Apoorva holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MJP Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, and a master’s degree in engineering by research from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru. After completing his master’s from JNCASR and prior to joining the Ph.D. program at IISc, Apoorva served as a senior project associate at the National Centre for Flexible Electronics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, Apoorva is studying perovskite solar cells, investigating the evolution in defects and recombination mechanisms at different stages of degradation through spectroscopic procedures. The insights gained from his research will contribute to achieving optimal device performance and stability in the field. Apoorva actively organizes and takes on leadership roles in various academic and cultural activities. He is a music enthusiast, with skill in live mixing, and he also enjoys reading, playing chess, and exploring new places.

Anjana Thampi

Dr. Anjana Thampi is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Jindal Global Law School, O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana. She received her BA (Hons.) from the University of Delhi in 2009, and MA from the University of Hyderabad in 2011. She completed her MPhil in 2014 and PhD in 2019 from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, under the supervision of Prof. Jayati Ghosh. Her doctoral thesis explored the impact of two food provisioning programmes on child nutrition and inequality in India. She was awarded the UGC Junior Research Fellowship in 2013.

Her areas of research include food security and nutrition, climate and sustainability, inequality, gender, and labour. She has published journal articles and book chapters and contributes opinion pieces on contemporary issues. She has also presented her work at national and international workshops and conferences.

Dr. Thampi’s postdoctoral project, supported by the Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, would assess the potential of a strengthened employment guarantee programme to address the climate and livelihoods crises in India. The study would estimate the green jobs created through a universal employment guarantee in India, its budgetary requirement, and suggest ways to finance it. The global Green New Deal, green job guarantee proposals in the United States, and international experiences of job guarantee would be compared with the experiences of the rural job guarantee in India. This project would have policy implications for India and the global project to address the climate crisis.

Amritha M. S.

Amritha M. S. is a research scholar at the Department of Botany, University of Calicut, Kerala, India. Her research is supported by CSIR in the form of a junior research fellowship, and her research is jointly supervised by Prof. (Dr.) Jos T. Puthur and Dr. Kishore Sridharan.

She is a proud alumna of St. Mary’s College, Thrissur, Kerala, India and St. Thomas College (Autonomous), Thrissur, Kerala, India, where she did her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Botany, respectively. For her doctoral research, she is studying the role of “Nanoscale graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) priming of rice (Oryza sativa L.) for enhancing abiotic stress tolerance”. She has publications in top-tier journals to her credit.

She is attempting to develop a cost-effective and farmer-friendly technique for protecting plants against various abiotic stresses using nanostructured priming agents, under the supervision of her guides. Apart from her research, Amritha enjoys teaching students and is an excellent mentor who has been successful in inspiring some of her students to pursue careers in science and research while working as Assistant Professor. Her hobby is to identify plants and learn about the flora of different places.

The Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship will help her explore how nano-structural material priming agents such as g-C3N4 and their relatively useful forms can help plants cope with adverse environmental conditions, as well as the molecular mechanisms behind this plant tolerance. It also allows her to examine how the study results will benefit farmers

Srinivas Chokkakula

Dr. Srinivas Chokkakula is the Ministry of Jal Shakti (MoJS) Research Chair – Water Conflicts and Governance, at Centre for Policy Research (CPR), New Delhi. He leads the TREADS (Transboundary Rivers, Ecologies and Development Studies) group founded by him at CPR. His research interests extend to the broader area of water policy and governance, federalism, politics of infrastructure development in India and South Asia.

Dr. Chokkakula is a recognized voice in national debates and discourse on water policy and governance. His work on interstate river water disputes and transboundary water governance has received extensive attention from policy makers, and informed public debate and discourse in the country – including those over the Interstate River Water Disputes Amendment Bill, 2019. He is a member of the Drafting Committee for National Water Policy formulated by the Government of India.

His efforts as the MoJS Research Chair have led to an MoU between CPR and NMCG for collaborative research and knowledge production towards the broader goal of rejuvenating rivers in India. Under this MoU, TREADS at CPR will be working closely with NMCG to improve the outcomes of the NMCG’s Namami Gange programme and contribute to policy thinking about rejuvenating India’s rivers.

He has an interdisciplinary training in human geography, planning and engineering with a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of Washington, Seattle, and a postdoctoral at SOAS, London. Apart from several other fellowships and scholarships, Dr. Chokkakula has been the British Council’s Chevening Scholar in its Young Indian Environmental Managers programme, 2000.

As the Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Chair in Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he will be teaching and conducting research on federal responses to the emerging challenges of interstate river water governance in India and the USA.

Jayesh Sonwane

Dr. Jayesh Manohar Sonawane obtained his Ph D from the Department of Energy Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Maharashtra, under the s upervision of Prof. Prakash Chandra Ghosh and the Department of Chemistry, Monash University, Australia under the supervision of Prof. Samuel Adeloju. His Ph D research focuses on the development of conducting polymer electrodes for microbial fuel cells for power generation and wastewater treatment. Dr. Sonawane is a recipient of the prestigious “Excellence Research award 2016-18” from Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India.

During his PhD , he was awarded the Shastri Fellowship from the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and went to Toronto University where he worked on Elucidation electric properties of engineered E. coli with pilA gene from Geobacter sulfurreducens, at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry. Later, he joined a postdoctoral researcher in the same department, w here he worked on a hybrid bioelectrochemical treatment process for liquid stream for the “Reinventing the Toilets” project funded by the Bill & Melinda G ates F oundation. Dr. Sonawane is currently working on a microfluidics bioelectrochemical system for understanding electroactive biofilms at Université Laval, Quebec, Canada.

Protein nanowires are a revolutionary green sustainable electronic material with unique physical, chemical, and biological properties that offer substantial advantages over other nanowire materials for biomedical and environmental sensing. The project will explore novel concepts for the large-scale separation of the wires from the cells. High throughput methods will be optimized for the fabrication of sensors specifically designed for four different analytes to demonstrate a range of high commercial relevance in clinical and environmental sensing. Dr. Sonawane is supported by the Fulbright-Nehru F ellowship and is working with scientist Prof. Derek R Lovley at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.

Shanthie Mariet D Souza

Dr. Shanthie Mariet D’Souza is Founder & President of Mantraya, an independent research forum. She is also a visiting faculty at the Naval War College, Goa; a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C.; a Research Fellow at WeltTrends-Institut für internationale Politik, Potsdam; an International Advisor at the Nordic Counter Terrorism Network, Helsinki; and an Adviser for Independent Conflict Research and Analysis, London. In a career spanning over two decades, she has conducted extensive field research in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, Africa, and Australia.

Dr. D’Souza, with a Ph.D. in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, is an established inter-disciplinary researcher on conflict resolution, foreign policy, decision making, and human security. She has been widely published in national and international journals, newspapers, policy forums, and edited books, receiving attention from academic and practitioners, informing public debate and discourse.

She has been awarded various fellowships and been associated with a number of thinktanks, universities in India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Singapore, Australia, Germany, Canada, and the U.S. Most recently, Dr. D’Souza has been a Founding Professor at the Kautilya School of Public Policy,Hyderabad. She has been a recipient of the Fulbright Junior Research Fellowship (2005-06) and the President’s Award for Excellence in Research (2009) from the Manohar Parrikar-Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi.

As the Fulbright-Nehru Visiting Chair in Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, she will be teaching and conducting research on Global Climate Change and Geopolitics of Energy and prospects for cooperation between India and U.S. in addressing issues of climate change, mitigation, and crisis management.

Avijit Maity

Mr. Avijit Maity is a Ph.D. scholar at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore. His current area of research focuses on physical insight into novel lipid corona formation and its impact on protein corona formation. His research on the underlying mechanism of lipid corona formation on amino acid functionalized gold nanoparticles has been published in several peer-reviewed international journals. He also won the best oral presentation award in the CHEM-In-house Symposium held at IIT Indore, India.

Mr. Maity earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal and his master’s degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Indore . He was a recipient of the merit cum means scholarship from the Government of West Bengal and IIT Indore during his bachelor’s and master’s degree respectively. In his leisure time, he enjoys spending time with his friends and loves to arrange cultural programs.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Maity is exploring the impact of lipid corona composition on nanoparticle uptake by the cell. The aim of his project is to investigate the extent of the cellular uptake quantitatively when different surface charged lipid and hard-soft lipid corona is present around the nanoparticles. As the research on the lipid corona field is emerging day by day, his advanced research in this topic will provide a new outlook to Nanoscience community.