Host City India: Logan

Simardeep Kaur

Ms. Simardeep Kaur is a doctoral candidate in the Division of Biochemistry, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Her doctoral thesis focuses on deciphering the microRNA related modulations in contrasting rice genotypes under drought stress. Global climate change and associated adverse effects such as drought greatly influence plant growth and development thus, affecting crop yield, quality and agricultural sustainability as well.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow she will be working with bioinformatics experts to further improve her understanding of bioinformatic tools and software for comprehensive analysis of the data generated from the molecular biology related work (mainly drought related) from wet-lab experiments. She will learn to handle large data sets like those for transcriptome, lncRNAs, miRNAs, validation techniques and their analysis so that she can integrate molecular biology with bioinformatics to develop drought tolerant agricultural crops. Therefore, work carried out during the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship will substantiate and help speed the progression of ongoing research projects towards developing a climate-smart cultivar for sustainable food production in the near future.

She went to Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana for her graduation in Biochemistry in 2017 and then attended the graduate school at PAU for her M.Sc. in Biochemistry in 2019. She worked on the Biochemical basis of leaf blight resistance in barley and published her results in a reputed journal. During her master’s, she received a gold medal for excellence in chemistry/biochemistry, a PAU merit Fellowship, the Pyara Singh Parmar award, and also represented PAU at the Indian Students Parliament held in Pune, Maharashtra. She is a recipient of the JRF and SRF from the CSIR in her Ph.D. and also cleared other national level examinations like GATE (Life Sciences), ICAR-NET, ARS-prelims, JNUEE etc.

When she is not working in her lab, Simardeep spends most of her time reading novels, cooking food for family, and exploring new places. A travel enthusiast and hodophile, she feeds her addiction by visiting as many places with her favourite Agronomist as she can.

Rohit Ravi

Dr. Rohit Ravi earned his PhD from Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Karnataka, under the guidance of Dr. Krishna Yerraguntla & Dr. Bellur Rajashekhar. He is working at the Department of Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology, Kasturba Medical College, MAHE, Mangalore . His areas of research include pediatric audiology and rehabilitative audiology. He has over 35 peer- reviewed international publications which have been widely cited. He serves as an academic editor for PLOS ONE and is on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Audiology and Otology. He serves as a reviewer for over 15 peer-reviewed indexed journals in the field of Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology. He has been successful in receiving funding from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He is the recipient of the prestigious Audiology/Hearing Research Travel Award by the American Speech Language and Hearing Association. He has also been accepted for the 2022 Audiology Early Career Professionals Program by the American Speech Language and Hearing Association.

Dr. Ravi will be pursuing his Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the National Center for Hearing Assessment and Management (NCHAM) at Utah State University under the mentorship of Dr. Karl White, who is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on early identification and treatment of hearing loss. His research at NCHAM will help gain experience and expertise from well-established and successful Universal Newborn Hearing Screening (UNHS) programs in the United States that can help in expanding and improving the implementation of UNHS programs in India.