Host City USA: Bengaluru

Niyati Shah

Niyati Shah is an Indian American research analyst and community organizer based in Washington, DC, who synthesizes mixed methods and participatory research to advance public and planetary health. She holds a BS in statistics and public health from George Washington University. In Washington, Niyati served as a grassroots organizer for Ward 2 Mutual Aid, which is a community-led effort to build solidarity, meet the survival needs of unhoused neighbors, and foster collective support during times of crisis. She was a key member of its Oral History Project, which documents the realities of housing and food insecurity, and showcases how neighbors organize to address these issues. She previously worked at Westat, where she collaborated on projects that evaluated and monitored the U.S.’s social safety net programs with the mission to improve the health outcomes of historically underserved communities. At Westat, she contributed to research on nursing home staff during COVID-19, examined the regional differences in the quality of kidney care in the U.S., and studied the experiences of mothers on supplemental nutrition programs in rural areas. Prior to Westat, Niyati worked at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) where she helped measure the role of social networks on the health outcomes and burden among caregivers of children with metabolic disorders. Niyati presented her team’s research at the NHGRI symposium in 2019. In her free time, Niyati knits and crochets, bakes cardamom-orange olive oil cake, and befriends neighborhood cats. She also performs Bharatnatyam and Kathak dances with DC’s performing arts group, Nootana, and with Lasya Dance Academy.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project at Bengaluru, Niyati, by integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches, is examining how rural–urban migration into sites of climate vulnerability impacts the health of migrant women. Guided by frameworks within environmental scholarship, her research is exploring the reasons for migration and studying the migrants’ exposure to hazards, as well as the health risks and coping strategies. The study’s findings are expected to spur the development of structures that facilitate the mobility of displaced women and support their adaptation strategies in the face of climate breakdown.

Michelle Pu

Michelle Pu is a recent graduate from Tufts University, where she studied biology and child studies and human development. She is passionate about learning how she can best support the neurodiverse and disabled population throughout their lifespan. As an undergraduate student, Michelle worked in a rehabilitation center serving neurodiverse and physically disabled adults. Motivated by this experience, she worked in the Crehan Lab at Tufts University delivering a sexual education curriculum to autistic teenagers and researched how autistic adults interact in intimate relationships. She also worked in the Feinberg Broder-Fingert Lab at UMass Chan Medical School investigating an early-intervention curriculum for young children with social communication challenges. Besides, she conducted a research project regarding electronic communication devices for physically disabled adults. It was Michelle’s experiences as a mental health hotline operator, hospice volunteer, and as a volunteer working with housing-insecure children that shaped her interest in supporting others’ mental health and social well-being at all ages and life stages.

In her Fulbright-Nehru research project, Michelle is investigating the impact of affiliate stigma on caretakers when they disclose their child’s autism diagnosis to others. Affiliate stigma is defined as internalized stigma felt by the family members of a stigmatized individual. While previous studies have established that Indian parents of autistic children may experience affiliate stigma, research has not yet investigated the effects of such stigma. For her research, Michelle is conducting semi-structured interviews with caregivers of autistic children in Bengaluru regarding their experiences in navigating their child’s diagnosis.

Anousha Peters

Anousha Peters previously worked with Labor Notes, an organization which educates workers who are democratizing their trade unions, and with United for Respect supporting retail employees at Amazon and Walmart who were espousing the cause of dignity in their workplaces. Anousha studied sociology at Columbia University where she conducted research with professors Adam Reich and Hana Shepherd. Before transferring, she attended the liberal arts program of Deep Springs College in California for two years. Originally from Gainesville, Florida, Anousha’s professional and political interests have focused on marginalized and precarious workers. She enjoys running, watercolor painting, listening to podcasts, and bringing together and hosting friends.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Anousha is studying women’s participation in platform gig work in India wherein freelance workers are connected to consumers through online marketplaces. She is studying the reasons behind women taking up such work, the workingconditions they encounter, and their feelings of safety and agency in their work. While the study is focusing on Bengaluru, its learnings will find use across India and beyond since gig work is growing globally and is often conducted on transnational platforms.

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.