Host City India: West Lafayette

Prateek Kumar

Mr. Prateek Kumar is a Ph.D. Candidate at School of Basic Science, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. He works on different systems of viral proteins to study their folding/unfolding behaviour, disordered property, protein-protein interaction, and structure-based inhibitor designing. His research is based on understanding the protein dynamics in different environments, modulation upon interaction with lipids, and identification of inhibitors against specified targets using in-silico as well as in-vitro approaches. He has published his research works in reputed and peer-reviewed international journals.

Mr. Kumar earned an M.Sc. in Bioinformatics from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He did his B.Sc. in Zoology from University of Delhi, New Delhi. In 2018, he worked as an intern for two months in his current home institute and worked on structure-based drug discovery on viral (Zika virus, Chikungunya virus) proteins. Since then, he has developed his interest in structure biology and drug designing.

During the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, he will investigate the least explored area of capsid protein and RNA interaction of Zika Virus. He will also perform experiments to identify novel druggable molecules.

Mr. Kumar has great interest in computers and likes to learn and implement newly developed technologies. Additionally, he is fond of cooking vegetarian food.

Richa Singh

Dr. Richa Singh did her PhD in 2020 under the supervision of Dr. Manjari Jain at the Indian Institute of Science Education & Research (IISER) Mohali, Punjab. Her thesis examines the effect of three important environmental factors (light, temperature and ambient noise) on the acoustic signaling of a nocturnal ensiferan insect, Acanthogryllus asiaticus. After her PhD, she moved to the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi , to monitor bird populations using a machine learning approach. She is currently working as a p roject s cientist at the Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.

Dr. Singh is a recipient of a DST-Inspire Fellow ship and has qualified for the UGC-NET examination. She is an Executive Committee member of the Ethological Society of India and has published her research work in reputed international journals. She has won various travel grants to present her work on international platforms such as the International Bioacoustics Congress Travel grant award from University of Sussex, UK, Association for the Study of Animal Behavior Diversity travel grant award from University of Konstanz, Germany, DST International travel grant, Government of India and Animal Behavior Society Diversity travel grant from University of Illinois, Chicago. She secured third place in the 3MT (3-minute thesis) competition in Behavior Conference at University of Illinois, Chicago, in 2019. She got the best oral presentation awards (National Conference on Behavioral Ecology, Gujarat, 2017 and Young Ecologists Talk and Interact, Assam, 2017) and the best poster presentation awards (Conference on Insect Biodiversity Studies, Kerala, 2016 and National Symposium on Behavioural Ecology, Varanasi, 2014).

Frog-biting mosquitoes and their host are confronted with unprecedented growing anthropogenic noise levels. It is unknown how such novel acoustic conditions will affect mosquitoes in detecting, recognizing, and localizing their hosts. As a Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow , Dr. Singh will use a neuroethological approach to understand the behavioral responses and underlying mechanisms of organisms under novel noisy conditions. In particular, her research will shed light on the effect of anthropogenic changes on vector-host interactions.

Debanjan Konar

Dr. Debanjan Konar earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) from the University of Burdwan , in 2010, an MTech in CSE from the National Institute of Technical Teachers’ Training and Research (NITTTR), Kolkata , in 2012, and a PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi in New Delhi , in 2021. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), Germany. Prior to this, Dr. Konar served as an Assistant Professor at Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, Sikkim , and SRM University-AP, Andhra Pradesh . His research interests include quantum machine learning (QML), hybrid classical-quantum neural networks, deep learning, and computer vision. He has authored several papers in prestigious computer science journals, conference proceedings, book chapters, and internationally renowned books. Dr. Konar received a National Scholarship in 2001 and a GATE Postgraduate Fellowship in 2010. He is an IEEE senior member and an ACM member. He also serves as an editor and a reviewer for several esteemed journals and international conferences.

Recently, Quantum Computing (QC) has been leveraged for machine learning with the expectation that the uncertainty inherent in QC may be used to great advantage in stochastic-based modelling , spurring new research on Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) devices. To exploit the advantages of stochastic-based modelling in QML research, Dr. Konar has proposed Spiking Quantum Neural Networks using hybrid classical-quantum algorithms with the merits of superposition states and amplitude encoding. Within this Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research Fellow ship, the proposed models will be extensively validated on various computer vision applications, including disguised facial recognition using the PennyLane Quantum Simulator with limited quantum hardware and supercomputing resources available at Purdue University, USA.

Manjusha V. Shelke

Dr. Manjusha Shelke is working as Principal Scientist in the Physical and Materials Chemistry division of CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Dr. Shelke is also an Associate Professor at AcSIR. She has completed her Ph.D. in chemistry from CSIR-Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute, Bhopal in 2006. She has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Institut d’électronique de Microélectronique et de anotechnologie, CNRS, Lille, France during 2007-08 sponsored by Embassy of France in India. She has been awarded a visiting scholarship in chemical sciences by Indo-US Science and Technology Forum and worked at Rice University, Houston, TX, USA during 2013-14. She has been elected as Kavli Fellow by National Academy of Sciences, USA in 2015 and as a Fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences in 2018. In 2021 Science and Engineering Research Board of Govt. of India awarded her with SERB-POWER Fellowship. She has been invited as a Visiting Faculty at Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) academy since 2020 and on the research advisory board of Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Bhopal in 2022. She is a materials’ chemist and her research interests are in the development of high energy electrode materials for storage devices like rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors. She has published 70 journal articles, eight book chapters, six patents granted and 10 invention disclosures filed. 11 of her students graduated with PhD. In 2021, she has founded a spin-off company “Rechargion Energy Pvt. Ltd.” to take research from her lab to the market.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence research fellow, Dr. Shelke aims to understand the failure mechanisms in Lithium-Sulphur rechargeable battery cells, address them with interfacial engineering strategies and develop a working prototype with reasonable cycle life and high specific energy.

Amit Kumar

Dr. Amit Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Geoinformatics at the Central University of Jharkhand, Ranchi. He earned his Ph.D. in remote sensing technology from the Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra. His research focuses on urban ecology and sustainability, and anthropogenic and climate change impacts on urban and forest ecosystems. Some of his current projects include DBT-Mapping and quantitative assessment of plant resources in Central India; R&D projects sponsored by Space Application Centre (ISRO) under AVIRIS-NG; L&S band SAR-NISAR; GISAT missions; a project sponsored by Columbia University; and IISc, Bengaluru coordinated Long-term Ecological Observatories program of forest dynamics and soil processes developed under the Climate Change Action Plan of MoEFCC at pan India scale. Dr. Kumar is also a member of the IUCN-Commission on Ecosystem Management, South Asia and Global Forests Biodiversity Initiatives, USA, as well as a recipient of Fellow and Young Scientist awards of SSCE, New Delhi, SERB-ITSS, Government of India among others. He has published more than 100 research articles in different journals and books of international repute, including Nature Ecology and Evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), Science of The Total Environment, and CITIES.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Kumar is building an improved global forest above-ground biomass map in the Anthropocene using large-scale forest inventory data, high-resolution satellite observations, and machine learning techniques at Purdue University. His research will help in developing strategies to accomplish SDGs 13 and 15, which aim at sustainable forest management, by providing insights into the global carbon budget within diverse forest ecosystems.

Suneet Singh

Prof. Suneet Singh is currently Head of the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the Idaho National Lab in the U.S. before joining IIT Bombay. He did his PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. He graduated with a master’s in nuclear engineering and technology in 2000 from IIT Kanpur. His research focuses on efficient numerical techniques for neutron diffusion and fluid flow. Along with this, he has been investigating bifurcations in a number of systems, including nuclear coupled thermal hydraulics and two-phase flows fluids. In 2014, he was awarded the Bhaskara Advanced Solar Energy (BASE) fellowship by the Indo-U.S. Science and Technology Forum (IUSSTF). He also received the S. P. Sukhatme Award for Teaching Excellence at IIT Bombay in 2023.

As the Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence Scholar at Purdue University, IN, Prof. Singh is working on understanding pathways for hydrogen and heat generation along with power generation. Nuclear power stations (NPPs) release no greenhouse gases when in operation, emitting approximately the same amount of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per unit of electricity as wind and solar energy. Load following is a technique by which power plants alter their power production in response to daily fluctuations in demand and energy prices. Because of the high construction cost of NPPs, they are typically not intended for load following and are classified as base load plants. As a result, their use for hydrogen and/ or heat generation during low-load periods provides both economic and environmental benefits.

Madhushree Dutta

Madhushree Dutta is a Ph.D. candidate at the CSIR-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur, India. She is dissecting complex gene regulatory networks underlying potato tuberization under high-temperature stress. In her doctoral thesis, she is implementing plant physiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology tools to investigate redox regulation in tuber development. Her key areas of research interest include plant stress physiology, climate change biology, and epigenomics. So far, she has published in reputed journals and participated in several science outreach events to communicate science to a broader audience.

Madhushree obtained her master’s degree in botany from the University of Calcutta. Her dissertation was on understanding the regulation of carbohydrate metabolism in rice cultivars under arsenic stress. Thereafter, she worked as a project scholar focusing on the utilization of brassica seed meal as a bioherbicide for weed management in wheat. Madhushree devotes time to teaching research aspirants through social media platforms, using smart strategies to make learning more interesting. Madhushree is a recipient of honorary awards including, the Max-Planck Gesellschaft Travel award, Dr. Parimal Kumar Roy Memorial award, and Dr. Ramendra Krishna Sarkar Memorial award for her excellent academic and research projects.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, Madhushree is exploring how the PGR5-dependent cyclic electron transport pathway operates under high-temperature stress to protect the photosynthetic apparatus of potatoes, translating into physiological fitness and improved tuber yield to ensure global food security.