Dr. Amy Habeger is a professor of social work and the director of the Doctor of Social Work (DSW) program at Delaware State University, a historically Black university in the United States. She is a licensed clinical social worker with more than 20 years of practical experience in community mental health, integrated care, crisis response, homelessness, and services for women and children. Her academic and professional work focuses on strengthening social work education, community-engaged research, behavioral health practice, and the preparation of practitioner-scholars who can translate research into meaningful change. Her scholarship and teaching also explore equity, anti-racist practice, implementation of evidence-informed interventions, and the ways in which social work education can better respond to the communities it serves. As a Fulbright Specialist, Dr. Habeger is currently collaborating with the faculty and students at CHRIST (Deemed to be University) in Bengaluru through teaching, mentoring, research, and scholarly exchange. Her project aims to build relationships that can support future international collaborations.
Host City USA: Bengaluru
Stephanie McNulty
Dr. Stephanie McNulty, the Honorable John C. and Katherine Kunkel Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College, is the author of several books about decentralization and citizen engagement, and the coauthor of The Power and Perils of Participatory Democracy: Participatory Budgeting and Democracy in Peru (Oxford University Press, 2026). Her work has also been published in scholarly journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Latin American Politics and Society, the Journal of Development Studies, Revista de Ciencia Política, Current History, and the Journal of Public Deliberation, among other outlets. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, the American Association of University Women, the Hewlett Foundation, and the American Political Science Association. At Franklin & Marshall College, she teaches courses on global democracy and participatory politics.
Dr. McNulty’s Fulbright Global Scholar project is challenging the prevailing narrative that democracy is dying. While representative democracy (legislatures, courts, etc.) may be struggling, the project argues that participatory democracy, where ordinary citizens engage in direct decision-making, is expanding globally. It also seeks to correct the record by documenting both the ancient roots and modern expansions of these practices. As part of the project, she is conducting research in Greece, India, and Peru to document forms of participatory democracy that are largely absent from the historical records. In India, she is documenting the gram sabha (village assembly) structure, which may predate Athenian democracy and is currently practiced in around 250,000 villages.
Patrick Vogel
Patrick Vogel is an artist based in Los Angeles. Born in West Hollywood, he grew up acting on film sets and learned to transpose that collaborative spirit to his multidisciplinary path as a visual artist. Through sculpture, drawing, installation, and painting, he explores the inner and outer conditions of exhibition making in the twenty-first century.
Patrick’s transdisciplinary approach is unique, reflective of a conceptual practice grounded in site-specific research, happenstance, and an expanded art historical paradigm. His practice reveals power structures formed by particular stories that we tell ourselves, namely of imperialism, colonialism, and race prejudice, and the lethal epistemes branching out of them. His most recent work, the Hermit Series, takes on Roman and Gothic architectural forms, overlaid with photographs of palaces and royal doorways, which are then digitally carved, painted, and printed onto mirrors. Throughout, he deploys gesture and abstraction to produce an architectural palimpsest, a relic covered in futuristic cave paintings, which interrupts a clean reading of Western ideology as neutral, invisible, or inherent.
Patrick has traveled, taught, and lived across six continents. He received his BFA from Oregon Center for the Arts in Ashland, Oregon, and his MFA in art and technology from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. He has been an artist-in-residence at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Vermont Studio Center.
For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Patrick is studying British colonial architecture and native Indian architecture in Bengaluru, and developing a new series of installations in response. Through research and dialogue, he seeks to understand the varied epistemologies that became constructed public spaces in Bengaluru, spaces that owe its origins to different continents and cultures entirely. Through this project, he hopes for a broader perspective on global communities, how they interact, affect one another, and hybridize over time, and how we might, with clarity and focus, produce different spaces to better navigate the coming centuries. As part of the project, he is also a visiting artist-professor at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where he is engaging with BFA/MA students in the Contemporary Art Practice program.
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.
Shravya Sompalli
Shravya Sompalli is a graduate of Brown University with an ScB in computer science and ethnic studies. While a researcher in the Human Trafficking Research Cluster at the Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, she worked closely with the grassroots collective Red Canary Song to visualize and communicate changes over the past two decades in the policing of Asian massage work – commonly portrayed as synonymous with human trafficking – in New York. Partly building on this work, Shravya’s senior thesis investigated the integration of technological tools and discourses surrounding the potential of technology in the work of state and corporate anti-trafficking actors while considering the limitations of technological initiatives from the perspective of grassroots organizations.
She also worked in the Sociotechnical Systems and Wellbeing Research Lab (SWRL) at Brown, using mixed computational and qualitative methods to facilitate a greater understanding of how posters on online forums sought help on reproductive health-related concerns in 2024. After graduating, Shravya conducted data and policy work in support of Cook County’s Human Rights Ordinance as an applied data fellow in the county’s Department of Human Rights and Ethics.
Given the growing interest of many international anti-trafficking actors in the potential of interventional technology, Shravya’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining how anti-trafficking NGOs in Bengaluru are using technology in their victim identification and empowerment initiatives. This project seeks to build an understanding of the perceptions of NGO employees on the efficacy and usability of technological tools. It also aims to find out how users identify and balance potential privacy and security concerns with the adoption of such tools.
Renee Muthakana
Renee Muthakana is a graduate student at Duke University whose work lies at the intersection of law, policy, and medicine. With a focus on reproductive health systems, her research examines how legal and policy frameworks shape healthcare delivery. Renee is a University of Pittsburgh summa cum laude graduate, where she majored in women’s studies and chemistry.
She has two years of healthcare consulting experience at a leading global consulting firm, where she supported health systems in the areas of operational strategy, policy implementation, and performance improvement. Her research includes peer-reviewed and conference-based work on global in vitro fertilization (IVF) policy frameworks, assisted reproductive technology (ART), AI governance in clinical settings, and the inclusion of pregnant women in research. Recently, she coauthored a peer-reviewed article in BMC Reproductive Health; the article is a comparative analysis of IVF policies across 24 countries and identifies variation in regulatory approaches while highlighting India as a key case for further study due to its rapidly expanding ART market and the evolving regulatory landscape related to it.
Renee’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is examining how India’s ART policies can be strengthened to improve the quality of care. Building on Renee’s recent coauthored publication, her project is conducting a national- and state-level ART policy review, alongside interviews with policymakers, clinicians, and patients, with the aim of generating actionable insights to inform policy development.
Dharani Moorthy
Dharani Moorthy graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a BS in molecular and cellular biology in May 2026. His academic and research interests center on infectious disease, diagnostic innovation, and expanding healthcare access for underserved communities. Dharani is a recipient of the Johns Hopkins Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award, one of only 20 undergraduates selected for this competitive funding. At the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, he investigates novel virulence factors in Trypanosoma cruzi and their regulatory mechanisms, using RNA sequencing, bisulfite sequencing, and mouse models to evaluate cardiomyopathy and infection dynamics in cardiomyocytes.
Beyond the lab, Dharani serves as a Hopkins Community Connection Triage Coordinator at Bayview Medical Center. He also writes accessible guides for bmorebenefits.com to help Maryland residents navigate government assistance programs. His research has been published in Nature, Operative Neurosurgery, and the Journal of Epidemiology and Population Health, with his Nature contribution focusing on antigen diversification in Trypanosoma brucei. Outside of research, Dharani is a certified EMT, a head teaching assistant in cognitive science, and a senior staff writer for the Johns Hopkins News-Letter, where he covers Baltimore’s local food scene.
Toxoplasmosis, caused by Toxoplasma gondii, infects over 30 percent of India’s population and can lead to brain inflammation, blindness, and severe outcomes in pregnant and immunocompromised individuals. Current diagnostics often fail to distinguish active infection from past exposure or convey disease severity. For his Fulbright-Nehru project at the Indian Institute of Science Parasite Epigenetics Lab under Dr. Meetali Singh, Dharani is investigating how microRNAs, small molecules that regulate gene activity, change during T. gondii infection in human blood samples. By identifying those miRNAs linked to disease and severity, mapping their target pathways, and testing them in human cell lines, his project aims to lay the groundwork for earlier, more accurate diagnostics and therapies.
Ananya Kamalakannan
Ananya Kamalakannan is a 2026 graduate from the Ohio State University, where she earned her BS in systems and behavioral neuroscience, with minors in medical humanities and global public health. Her academic and professional work centers on mental health equity, medical education, and the social determinants of health. As part of her honors undergraduate thesis, she conducted research on mental health trends among medical students by analyzing national datasets to investigate disparities in various mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, self-injurious behaviors, and suicidality.
Beyond research, Ananya is deeply involved in community engagement and student leadership. She was a Morrill Scholar at Ohio State and a recipient of the Kaplan Humanitarian Award, accolades that reflected her sustained leadership skills across civic and cultural organizations. She has also served as the president of Global Medical Brigades (a student-led volunteer organization that implements sustainable health systems), Red Saree (a nonprofit focused on health equity and awareness), and Tamil Sangam (a cultural outfit that preserves and promotes Tamil cultural heritage). Throughout her undergraduate career, Ananya was deeply engaged with South Asian communities across both the United States and India; during this time, she led mental wellness workshops for youth through Snehalaya, an NGO supporting women and children affected by poverty and HIV/AIDS, based in Ahmednagar, India.
A classically trained Indian dancer, and visual artist, Ananya is passionate about fostering cross-cultural dialogue through both public health and the arts. She hopes to become a physician-researcher focused on global mental health, medical education reform, and developing culturally grounded approaches to student well-being.
Ananya’s Fulbright-Nehru project involves a mixed-methods study examining the mental health of Indian medical students hosted at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru. The project is investigating how academic pressures and structural inequalities shape student mental health outcomes and treatment utilization. Drawing on her epidemiological research at Ohio State, Ananya is adapting validated survey instruments to the Indian context and conducting qualitative interviews with the students and faculty. She hopes to translate the findings into culturally grounded policy recommendations to improve institutional support systems and foster a generation of medical providers who embrace mental health as a priority.
Tenzin Dechen
Tenzin Dechen is a biostatistician with experience in healthcare delivery and data science. She holds an MPH in epidemiology from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Her work focuses on applying data analytics to understand clinical workflows, support care coordination, and inform health system improvement.
Tenzin spent nearly a decade at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Boston, where she worked with diverse health and population datasets, including electronic health record (EHR) data, to evaluate care delivery, assess quality, and support data-informed decision-making. Her work comprised statistical modeling, causal inference, and predictive analytics, with applications in population health and health equity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she contributed to the development of forecasting models to help anticipate patient demand and guide resource planning. She also codeveloped a mobility-based Business Risk Index using location data to examine patterns in transmission risk and support hospital operations.
Currently on a self-directed sabbatical, Tenzin is focusing on global health systems and digital health infrastructure. Her work emphasizes the use of EHR systems to improve data quality, workflow efficiency, and patient care in resource-limited settings.
Tenzin Dechen’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is exploring how an EHR system can support patient care and clinic operations at Sera Mey Health Center, located in a Tibetan settlement in southern India and serving both Tibetan and neighboring rural populations. Using historical paper records and newly digitized data, the project is examining patterns in patient care, identifying gaps in follow-up, and evaluating how workflow factors such as patient volume and wait times shape service delivery. By generating practical insights and tools tailored to the center’s needs, the project aims to support clinical workflows, improve efficiency, and enable more patient-centered healthcare in the resource-limited setting.
Lenore Rinder
Ms. Lenore Rinder is an independent filmmaker based in the United States. She holds an MFA degree in film/painting from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has worked as a photojournalist for newspapers in Wisconsin and Idaho, and as a staff photographer for the Ballet Folk of Moscow, a touring dance company based in Idaho. She has taught film, animation, and painting at UW-Milwaukee, and was also a producer-director with Time Warner Cable’s Community Television. For 12 years, she worked as a visual communications instructor for incarcerated teenagers at the Ethan Allen School for Boys, through Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections.
In 2013, fueled by her passion for wildlife conservation, she began to make documentaries on the subject, with a focus on the marginalized indigenous communities in India. Using the video as a lens to examine the impact of environmental degradation and animal extinction on humans, she has been exploring the intersection between nature conservation and social justice issues. Her short films feature: a covert cottage industry of fake tiger skin artisans; poachers finding alternative income catching and releasing urban monkeys; a family-run craft cooperative adjacent to a tiger park in Rajasthan; and an elephant sanctuary camp in Dubare, Karnataka. As a visual artist who paints and creates animation, Ms. Lenore weaves digital images into her live action documentary footage.
Her films have been screened at several international festivals, such as Ethnografilm Paris, the Athvikvaruni International Film Festival in Tamil Nadu, and the Rome Prisma Independent Film Awards. Her film, Kagaraja, was a winner at the Tagore International Film Festival, Bolpur, India, in 2021. Ms. Lenore has received three grants from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund. In 2019, the Indian Institute of World Culture invited her to screen her documentary, People of the Wild Tiger. In 2025, her four documentaries had their world premiere in Bengaluru.
For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Lenore is making a documentary titled “Kids for Tigers, Designing Their Future”. That will be the culmination of 13 years of research, working with nature guides, villagers, and educators. Through the project, she is also continuing to film the children who are part of an educational program called Kids for Tigers. Besides, she is engaging with students at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she is facilitating communication between Indian and American students on art, conservation, and culture.