Host City USA: Bengaluru

Anna Kozan

Anna Kozan is graduating in May 2024 with a BS in nursing and a BA in Spanish language studies from Ramapo College of New Jersey (RCNJ). In her Spanish studies program, she conducted research on the intersection of language and health, and the potentially detrimental outcomes that can occur when patients speak a different language from their care providers. In 2023, she completed a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), Spark, to study Russian. She is now volunteering as a CLS alumni ambassador and advertising the program through social media and by hosting events. She has been working as a patient care technician at a hospital in New Jersey since October 2022 and developing her clinical skills to help her in her career as a nurse. Anna also works as a Spanish tutor at Ramapo College. Besides, she is the social media chair of the RCNJ Spanish Club. She is also a member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and of the Sigma Delta Pi National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society. Anna is fluent in Spanish and holds an intermediate mid-proficiency in Russian, as well as a novice high proficiency in Arabic and the American Sign Language. She is also a choreographer and performer for the RCNJ Dance Company.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Anna is researching if language barriers in India’s Karnataka state is affecting patient care, health literacy, and health outcomes. Working with Dr. Archana Siddaiah at St. John’s Medical College in Bengaluru, she is interviewing healthcare workers at the college to determine their experiences with language barriers and patient care. She is also interviewing patients to find out whether they are experiencing problems in care due to language barriers. The goal of the project is to implement community-based solutions for the issues that are identified.

Samantha Chacko

Samantha Chacko graduated from the University of Southern California (USC) in May 2024 with a major in philosophy, politics, and law, and two minors, one in law and public policy and another in opera. It was through her interdisciplinary coursework that Samantha discovered her passion for law. During her sophomore year, she spent a semester interning with the Esperanza Immigrant Rights Project, where she picked up an interest in advocacy. Inspired by Esperanza’s mission, she spent the following year with JusticeCorps, an AmeriCorps program that provides legal assistance to self-representing litigants. Her research experience includes a summer at Cambridge University comparing the legal aid frameworks of the U.S., India, and the UK. Samantha spent her senior year with USC’s Center for Political Future, conducting multiple public policy research projects addressing political polarization and LA’s housing crisis. She intends to build on these experiences and skills through her Fulbright program. Ultimately, she hopes to attend law school and continue her work in increasing access to legal aid. Samantha held several leadership positions on campus, including being the student ambassador for the Thornton School of Music. She was also elected director of Mehfil for her South Asian fusion a cappella team, Asli Baat. Outside of studies, Samantha enjoys singing and watching Bollywood movies.

Although Indian citizens are constitutionally guaranteed access to legal aid, in the year 2023 only 61 per cent of those seeking legal assistance actually received it. While little research has categorized the access to these services by demographic, one report from 2016 found that only 14 per cent of all litigants in India were women. However, it remains unclear whether women actually receive the legal assistance they are entitled to and if they do, whether the quality of the service is of the required standard. Samantha’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is identifying the factors perpetuating the gender gap in access to Indian courts and thus attempting to inform the universal development of legal aid frameworks.

Abel Abraham

Abel Abraham completed his BS in mathematics and biomedical engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He will be joining the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering to pursue his PhD following his Fulbright-Nehru research period. Abel’s broad interests are in active matter and its intrinsic connections to biology. He specifically wants to understand collective behaviors and the emergence of order and organization in multicellular systems.

Abel is an experimentalist who tries to understand complex systems from the perspective of physical and mathematical principles. During his four-year degree program, while working with Prof. Pedro Saenz at UNC’s Physical Mathematics Lab, he was experimenting with vibrated fluid interfaces, particularly Faraday waves and walking droplets. His experiments with Faraday waves demonstrated similar statistical features with non-equilibrium systems at different scales, leading to a paper under review of which he is a co-author. Abel has also done experiments and simulations to show an absence of diffusion in walking droplets which is analogous to the localization of electrons in disordered potentials. This led to his first-author paper which is also under review.

In his Fulbright-Nehru program, Abel is working with Prof. Shashi Thutupalli in the Simon’s Centre for the Study of Living Machines at the National Centre for Biological Sciences. He is studying active matter systems of stronger biological connection like active droplets and polymers, and exploring how memory affects the dynamics of these active droplet and polymer systems. In this process, Abel aims to gain more experience in the space between physics and biology, which is where he will continue working during his PhD.

Ashwini Tambe

Dr. Ashwini Tambe is professor of history and director of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at George Washington University. She is a scholar of gender and law in South Asia and of transnational feminist theory. Over the past two decades, she has written about how South Asian societies regulate sexual practices. Her 2009 book, Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (University of Minnesota Press), traces how law-making and law-enforcement practices shaped the rise of the city’s red-light district. Her 2019 book, Defining Girlhood in India: A Transnational Approach to Sexual Maturity Laws (University of Illinois Press), examines the legal paradoxes in age standards for girls’ sexual consent in India. She has also published the co-edited volumes, Transnational Feminist Itineraries (with Millie Thayer) and The Limits of British Colonial Control in South Asia (with Harald Fischer-Tiné). Her most recent journal articles have appeared in Feminist Formations, American Historical Review, and South Asia. She is also the editorial director of Feminist Studies, the oldest U.S. journal of feminist interdisciplinary scholarship.

Dr. Tambe holds a PhD in international relations from American University, Washington, D.C., and has taught at the University of Maryland and the University of Toronto. She has supervised doctoral dissertations on a wide range of topics, including the history of women’s studies; sports and gender; and religion and sexuality. In 2018, she received the Graduate Mentor of the Year Award from the University of Maryland.

Dr. Tambe’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring feminist debates on appropriate punishment for sexual harm, with a focus on the impact of digital activism. This is an important time in India to pose questions about such punishment since a new legal code, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, recently replaced the Indian Penal Code. At this time of intense deliberation over regulating gender justice, Dr. Tambe is based in a premier legal education site, the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), researching cases of digital retribution, defamation lawsuits, and caste barriers to seeking justice in cases of sexual violence.

Holly Wise

Ms. Holly Wise is the program operations manager at the nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network and an adjunct lecturer at Kent State University and Tri-C Community College. Formerly a journalism lecturer at Texas State University in San Marcos, where she taught advanced news-writing and multimedia courses, and introduced a solutions journalism course, Ms. Wise now works solely to advance the practice of solutions journalism in newsrooms, journalism schools, and organizations that support journalism. She was a recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Teaching Award in 2018 and taught solutions journalism at Mt. Carmel College, Bengaluru, during 2018–2019. Ms. Wise is also the founder of VoiceBox Media, which conducts rigorous analysis of how people solve social problems within their communities. She is a frequent speaker at national journalism conferences and also delivers guest lectures at universities in the United States and Canada.

Ms. Wise was the part-time director of journalism school engagement at the Solutions Journalism Network and during this stint, she consulted with journalism professors and lecturers on creating solutions journalism curriculum for their respective schools. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s degree in mass communication from Murray State University.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Wise is teaching students and local journalists the practice of reporting on climate-related problems through a solutions journalism lens. She is also facilitating trainings for journalists who are already part of her extensive network in India. Further, by collaborating with the faculty at Christ, she is modifying the news-writing curriculum so as to incorporate solutions journalism modules into in it; she is also implementing a module of solutions journalism lectures and assignments designed for journalism professors. Besides, she is planning to co-host a regional conference for journalists in order to learn about their experiences in covering climate through a solutions journalism framework.

Kaylin Clements

Dr. Kaylin Clements has a BS in environmental science and a BA in business administration from the University of Florida, and an MS in conservation leadership and a PhD in human dimensions of natural resources from Colorado State University (CSU). Her past work has included: applied quantitative and qualitative research on protected area management and community engagement in southern Belize; studying pro-environmental behaviors in Florida and Belize related to controlling the invasive lionfish; and social network analysis on a variety of social and environmental issues. Between graduate degrees, she served as a social scientist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She has also served as a facilitator and research assistant for the Center for Public Deliberation at CSU, as an instructor in human dimensions of natural resources courses at CSU, and as a social network research assistant for the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences. Most recently, as a research social scientist fellow for the United States Geological Survey, she served as the partner engagement coordinator and as a co-chair of the National Early Detection and Rapid Response Framework to prevent the establishment of invasive species in the United States.

Her main research interests center around human dimensions of natural resources, which applies social science theory and methods to understand complex social–ecological systems. Specifically, she is interested in how social networks, cultural norms and models, and other social factors support or inhibit adoption of pro-environmental behaviors and collaboration. She is also passionate about teaching and building capacity in the social sciences to enhance the impacts of conservation work.

Dr. Clements’s Fulbright-Nehru project is applying social network research methods to investigate the networks of healthcare professionals, community leaders, and health information in communities adjacent to wildlife habitat in the Western Ghats. The analysis is identifying barriers and opportunities for improved access to health and safety services and information. In addition, a social science methods course is training natural scientists in Bengaluru and at the Centre for Wildlife Studies to integrate social science into their research and practice.

Sanjeev Chawla

Dr. Sanjeev Chawla is a research assistant professor in the Department of Radiology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He is also a medical physicist certified by the American Board of Medical Physics. The focus of Dr. Chawla’s research has been directed toward the development of metabolic and physiological MR imaging-derived biomarkers in making correct diagnosis and assessing treatment responses to established, novel, and emerging therapies in patients with brain tumor, head and neck cancer, and neurodegenerative diseases.

He has a master’s degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and a PhD in radiology from Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow. He has authored 103 peer-reviewed original research/review articles and eight book chapters. He has been awarded research grants by agencies like the National Institute of Health/National Cancer Institute, the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and the Penn Center for Precision Medicine. Currently, he is leading two clinical trials related to electric field therapy in glioblastomas (NCT05086497) and evaluation of treatment response in the case of salivary gland tumors (NCT04452162).

Dr. Chawla is also an associate editor with the Journal of Translational Medicine and a reviewer for several leading scientific journals. Earlier, he was a guest editor with Frontiers in Neurology. He has also won the Outstanding Researcher Award in Neuroradiology from the Venus International Foundation and the Leadership and Mentorship Scholarship Award from the National Cancer Institute Awardee Skill Development Consortia.

Dr. Chawla’s Fulbright-Nehru project is building a robust, reproducible, and objective clinical decision support (CDS) tool by incorporating physiologic and metabolic MR imaging-derived parameters and molecular signatures combined with machine learning algorithms for assessing treatment response in glioblastoma patients receiving standard treatment as well as novel therapies. This tool will not only facilitate accurate and timely differentiation of true progression and pseudo progression in glioblastomas (precision diagnostics) but also allow clinicians to make “go/stop” decisions on therapeutic interventions (precision therapeutics). Additionally, it will help to relieve “scanxiety” among patients and their loved ones.

Ricca Slone

Prof. Ricca Slone has been teaching graduate public policy courses in Northwestern University’s School of Professional Studies for the past 12 years. Most recently, she taught an online course on Congressional procedure in Fall 2023. Before teaching at Northwestern University, Prof. Slone worked on water-supply issues for three years at the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a research and advocacy organization based in Chicago which works in several U.S. Midwestern states. From 1997 to 2005, Prof. Slone served four terms as a state representative in the Illinois House of Representatives, representing the 92nd district in central Illinois. She also chaired the Higher Education Appropriations Committee and was the vice chair of the Energy & Environment Committee.

As a senior scholar near the end of her working years, Prof. Slone hopes to rejuvenate the Sun Oven project by relaunching the assembling and marketing of solar ovens from a new location in Karnataka so that they can help women in South India who cook over wood fires.

Prof. Slone’s Fulbright-Nehru project is identifying strategies to overcome Indian cultural challenges to adopting renewable technologies. The framework for analysis is Nordgren and Schonthal’s friction theory (The Human Element, 2022). The project’s focus is on adoption of clean solar cooking by rural Indian women who otherwise cook over smoky fires, which is time consuming and causes respiratory diseases and deforestation. The research is a case study comparing the relative ease of adoption of the following technologies: wind turbines for energy; electric tuk-tuks for mobility; and solar ovens for cooking. Prof. Slone’s hypothesis is that cooking will encounter the most cultural resistance.

Ramakanth Kavuluru

Dr. Ramakanth Kavuluru is a professor of biomedical informatics (Department of Internal Medicine) in the College of Medicine at the University of Kentucky (UKY). He also has a joint courtesy appointment in the Department of Computer Science at UKY. He graduated with a PhD in computer science in 2009 from UKY with a focus on the security properties of pseudorandom sequences. Subsequently, he worked in knowledge-based search systems for focused bioscience domains as a postdoctoral scholar at Wright State University. Since 2011, he has been working as a faculty member at UKY focusing on natural language processing methods and their use in biomedicine and healthcare.

High-level applications of Dr. Kavuluru’s research include cohort selection for clinical trials, literature-based knowledge discovery, computer-assisted coding, social media-based surveillance for substance abuse, and clinical-decision support for precision medicine. He employs methods from machine learning (including deep learning) and data mining fields to drive his research agenda. His recent methodological contributions deal with zero-shot and few-shot classification, large language models, transfer learning, domain adaptation, and end-to-end relation extraction. Thus far, in his capacity as primary advisor, he has helped seven doctoral students and 10 master’s students attain their graduation.

Predicting disease onset ahead of time is an important application of artificial intelligence (AI) and this is being actively pursued in the U.S. and other western nations. From a global health perspective, it is not clear if the implications of the findings of U.S. patient-based modeling translate to more populous and diverse areas of the world. Thus, using latest machine learning methods and data sets from Indian healthcare facilities, Dr. Kavuluru’s Fulbright-Nehru project is rigorously assessing how well the promise of AI holds when applied to the Indian patient setting compared to the simpler standard-of-care approaches to risk stratification.

Jasmeet Judge

Dr. Jasmeet Judge received her BS in physics from Stillman College, Alabama, and her MS in electrical engineering, and PhD in electrical engineering and atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences from the University of Michigan. She is a professor in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department at the University of Florida, where she is also the director of the Center for Remote Sensing.

Dr. Judge’s research interests include microwave remote-sensing applications to terrestrial hydrology, crop development, and crop growth; electromagnetic models for dynamic agricultural terrains; and machine learning (ML) methods for spatio-temporal scaling and data-model fusion. For her research projects, she has received grants from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has led many field experiments with active and passive microwave sensors to develop/improve remote sensing, crop growth, hydrology, and ML algorithms. Dr. Judge has also won NASA Group Achievement Awards for interdisciplinary field campaigns. She has over 70 journal publications, three co-authored books, and numerous conference and invited presentations to her credit.

In addition to research, Dr. Judge has been active in advocating for the protection of the EM spectrum as the past member, vice chair, and chair of the National Academies Committee on Radio Frequency. She is also a member of the American Geophysical Union and a senior member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, where she has served in different roles on many committees for the past three decades.

Dr. Judge’s Fullbright-Kalam project is being carried out in collaboration with researchers in the Interdisciplinary Center for Water Research at the Indian Institute of Science in utilizing data from the upcoming NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission for the availability of timely soil and crop information in India. In addition, she is training the next generation of Indian scientists in microwave remote sensing.