Host City USA: Chennai

Theo Whitcomb

Mr. Theo Whitcomb is a writer and journalist from Southern Oregon. He has covered land use and natural resource politics for over two years, focusing on water, law enforcement, and cannabis agriculture. His writing has been published in national and regional magazines. In 2019, while in India, he began researching and writing about river restoration and land use in Chennai – a subject topic which the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship will continue to support this year.

While in South India for the second time, Mr. Whitcomb is interested in understanding how multinational companies, local social movements, and investors are shaping the politics, economics, and ecology of the region. His research will focus on studying the challenges and politics of Chennai to navigate a disaster-prone climate. To do this, he will work with scholars at the Madras Institute for Development Studies.

Working with scholars at Chennai’s Madras Institute for Development Studies, Mr. Whitcomb’s Fulbright-Nehru research focuses on the politics and infrastructure of ‘climate adaptation.’ He is interested in how multinational companies and international development investment is shaping the politics, economics, and ecology of the Coromandel coast.

Karun Salvady

Mr. Karun Salvady is a distinction graduate in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. He has an extensive research background in translational medicine, drug delivery and pharmaceutics and has worked at some of the premier medical institutes in the U.S. including the Baylor College of Medicine, Dell Medical School, National Institutes of Health and UT Austin College of Natural Sciences during his undergraduate tenure. He has delivered award winning presentations across the world at decorated institutions such as Harvard University, The University of Texas at Austin, Butler University, Qatar University, The National Institutes of Health, The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the National Conference on Medicine and Religion. He is also a published scientific author in the field of translational medicine.

Aside from his academic and professional achievements, Mr. Salvady is also a reputed South Indian classical (Carnatic) percussionist, an exponent of the mridangam, and has performed in over 500+ concerts with many of India’s leading musicians across the U.S., U.K. and India. Some of the noted musicians he has accompanied in the field of Indian classical music include Ganesh Rajagopalan (of Ganesh-Kumaresh fame), Flute Raman, AS Murali and Madurai R. Sundar, to name a few. He has also collaborated with musicians from genres such as Western classical, jazz, flamenco and pop, conducted workshops and lecture-demonstrations, recorded for albums and currently teaches South Indian percussion to earnest students in the US. He is currently completing a master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University of London in the unique Music, Mind & Brain program focused on music psychology and the cognitive neuroscience of musical behavior, where he is conducting cutting edge research on the intersection of music and the brain. His interests outside of academics and music include traveling, NBA basketball, food and spirituality.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Student, Mr. Salvady will be working on interdisciplinary research with aims to investigate the impact of South Indian Classical percussion listening on mental health outcomes. This project aims to pioneer efforts in developing a novel music listening protocol using South Indian Classical (Carnatic) rhythms to potentially aid mental health outcomes of neuropsychiatric patients. Cognitive deficits and low mood are common amongst patients with Schizophrenia, Parkinson’s Disease and Stroke recovery. Research has shown that music listening interventions can have beneficial effects on outcomes of mental health, especially on mood and cognition. Carnatic music listening interventions have yet to be experimented, with a particular lack of exploration using the rhythmic components of such music. Combining these approaches may open the way for further investigation in this area.

Persis Naumann

Ms. Persis Naumann is a PhD Candidate and Adjunct Professor at the Center for Global Health Ethics, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, where she also holds a master’s degree in Healthcare Ethics. Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from Sathyabama University, Chennai, India. Prior to moving to the U.S., Ms. Naumann taught IGCSE biology at Ghiyasuddin International School in the Maldives.

She is also the founder of Kelir Books LLC in Pittsburgh that produces bilingual Tamil language and cultural resources that represent all types of Tamil families including Tamils living around the globe, multicultural families, and language learners.

As a PhD student her research directly impacts Tamil women and the wider South Asian community. As a professor of ethics, she focuses on the promotion of cultural understanding and ethical decision making in cross-cultural care. In her entrepreneurial endeavor rooted in social responsibility, she equips and empowers parents and families through the complexities of socio-cultural identity in today’s world and advocates for ethical approaches in storytelling, representation, and business practice.

Ms. Naumann has extensive experience in bioethics empirical research including the qualitative research project, “Barriers to involvement in healthcare decision making in advanced cancer care in minority populations”, which was published in the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics Journal. She has also presented bioethics papers at major regional, national, and international ethics conferences and won several regional and national scholarships.

She worked with the Director of the American Nurse Association (ANA) Center for Ethics and Human Rights on nursing ethics policies, contributing towards ANA’s position statements and publications on gender and culture.

She has been a member of the Advisory Committee at Jeevaratchanai Social Service Organization Chennai, India, for over 10 years and currently provides them with quality and ethics consultation. By volunteering in person at the Jeevaratchanai children’s home and collaborating with the host institution during the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship she will spend time with the girls living there and students at the university, sharing America’s diverse culture and history through music, dance, sports, and food, celebrating the differences, and embracing the similarities in the cultures of America and India, as well as sharing her own travel and migration experience as a Chennai-born girl living in Pittsburgh. As a Global Health Ethicist with interdisciplinary experience, specialized in healthcare ethics research, teaching, practice, and policy, Ms. Naumann continues to contribute to the field of healthcare ethics, particularly at the intersections of class, culture, and gender.

Social stigma associated with involuntary childlessness persists in society – costing people their mental health, their relationships, their careers, and even their lives. Since much of the healthcare and ethics research, discourse, and processes stem from the Global North, they can lack the nuances and complexities that come with specific cultural understanding. This research aims to develop a robust, comprehensive, and culturally relevant ethical framework for sexual and reproductive healthcare by studying the impact of social stigma on healthcare decision making among women with involuntary childlessness in Tamil Nadu.

Through ongoing extensive research, Ms. Naumann is creating frameworks in the intersectional field of ethics, culture, and stigma in relation to healthcare access and decision making; lecturing in the field of healthcare education, raising the next generation of ethical thinkers and doers; and creating a network of culturally competent ethics trainers who will support organizations to address bias, stigma, and discrimination as a healthcare intervention.

Abhi Nathan

Ms. Abhi Nathan, originally from Marietta, Georgia, is a graduate of Vanderbilt University, where she earned a BA in Political Science and Medicine, Health & Society. In the summer of 2019, Ms. Nathan completed a congressional internship through the International Leadership Foundation where she focused on health and immigration policy. Her senior honors thesis built on these experiences, examining public policy during the COVID-19 pandemic in six cities across the United States to determine how local, state, and federal policy intersected to affect healthcare outcomes for immigrant populations.

On campus, she served as the President of Vanderbilt’s South Asian Cultural Exchange and chaired the annual Diwali Showcase, one of the largest cultural showcases on Vanderbilt’s campus celebrating the diversity and culture of South Asia. She also led voter registration and civic engagement efforts as a campus ambassador for the non-profit organization Asian Pacific Islander American Vote and the captain of Vandy Taal, a competitive South Asian fusion a Capella team. Following her graduation from Vanderbilt University, Ms. Nathan worked as a consulting analyst at Avascent, a boutique management consulting firm serving government-driven industries. She will be matriculating to Harvard Law School after the completion of her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship.

Ms. Nathan is conducting a research project which investigates the effectiveness of different types of local government bodies in Tamil Nadu. This is being accomplished through a series of case studies of various localities which represent the different types of local governments present in Tamil Nadu along a scale of urbanization (i.e., a gram panchayat, a town panchayat, a municipality, etc.). Through Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Nathan hopes to understand how differences in urbanization and location, among other factors, affect the administrative efficiency and civic engagement rates of these different localities. She is conducting this research under the guidance of the Peninsula Foundation (TPF), a Tamil Nadu-based non-profit think tank that works to reinforce India’s strength as an independent, sovereign nation-state through research on key policy issues.

Mahishan Gnanaseharan

Mr. Mahishan Gnanaseharan is a burgeoning scholar whose primary research interests lie at the intersection of modern intellectual history, legal philosophy, international relations theory, and global histories of decolonization during the 20th century. He has worked and studied in India, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Mr. Gnanaseharan graduated from Princeton University in 2020 with a concentration in Political Theory and minors in South Asian Studies and African American Studies. At Princeton, Mr. Gnanaseharan was awarded a Streicker International Fellowship in 2019 to travel to New Delhi and collaborate with scholars at the Centre for Policy Research on research regarding liberalism and secularism in Indian jurisprudence. Mr. Gnanaseharan has also been credited for contributions to Princeton faculty research ranging from analyses of the role of slavery in the founding of the United States to assessments of major political treatises on colonialism, historic injustice, and empire.

Upon graduation, Mr. Gnanaseharan contributed for a brief time to multimillion-dollar litigation efforts as a paralegal at a New York City law firm. Shortly thereafter, he became an MSc candidate in the Department of International History at the London School of Economics. Mr. Gnanaseharan’s postgraduate research has examined how the sizable migration of Tamil laborers from India to Ceylon in the early 20th century informed postcolonial conceptions of international borders and citizenship in South Asia.

Alongside from his research pursuits, Mr. Gnanaseharan is a passionate advocate for global human rights. He has raised concerns about violence against women and girls and the plight of refugees in South Asia before the United States Senate, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and the House of Commons in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Gnanaseharan’s Fulbright-Nehru research project maps the political legacies of South India’s ‘Self-Respect’ Movement by highlighting founder E.V. Ramaswamy’s (or ‘Periyar’s’) underexplored intellectual relationships with, among others, Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. Using his fluency in Tamil, Mr. Gnanaseharan is analyzing the heretofore untranslated writings of Periyar to contextualize the Self-Respect Movement’s historical implications for religious pluralism, democratic politics, and Indian civic identity. Ultimately, this project has the potential to directly inform contemporary public discourse regarding political relationships between South Asian citizens of differing social backgrounds.

Alexa Burnston

Ms. Alexa Burnston graduated from Duke University in May 2022 with a Bachelor of Arts. Her self-designed (Program II) major was titled: “Understanding the Concept of Value Through the Lens of Classical Musical Traditions,” where she explored the meaning of classical music and its perceptions of value across the human experience. She is a trained opera singer who ventured into jazz and Carnatic singing during her time in college. In Spring 2022, she performed a senior distinction recital in all three music forms, completed an ethnomusicology honors thesis, and graduated Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a 4.0 GPA, and with distinction.

While at Duke, she participated in numerous related student groups, serving as President of Small Town Records -Duke’s premier on-campus record label, serving on the student programming board (DUU), and in roles at Duke’s arts umbrella organization (duARTS), Duke’s Arts and Entertainment Alumni network (DEMAN), and the Duke in New York Arts and Media program (DiNY).

She has received numerous accolades for her work in music, including a Benenson Award in the Arts from Duke University, where she was able to begin her Carnatic and jazz training, Duke University Union’s Event of the Year Award, and received recognition for her work as a member of the CMA EDU leadership program. She has also been awarded for her opera singing.

Ms. Burnston’s passions in music span beyond her singing, and she also has direct arts administration and industry experience. She has been working in arts administration roles since the age of 16 and has worked in roles at Jazz at Lincoln Center and the Palm Beach Opera. In the music industry, she maintains an interest in classical music as well as music policy and supervision, working in roles at notable classical label Naxos of America, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and global record label Sony Music. Her experiences have prepared her to connect her research to a future career in the music industry.

Ms. Burnston’s background provides a comparative perspective for Carnatic research and will glean India-specific insights to explore the different ways to help markets and musicians. She will study in Chennai, the hub of Carnatic music, work with music students at the University of Madras, and analyze the role of arts administration in Carnatic music by working with Sabhas (music venues) and local arts administrators. Her Fulbright-Nehru research project is centered around the December season, during which Chennai hosts the largest Carnatic music festival in the world. She also aims to pursue a personal project about digital music distribution and continue Carnatic voice lessons.

Huaixiang Tan

Prof. Huaixiang Tan (previous Tan Huaixiang, prefer Tan) is a Full Professor in Costume and Makeup Design and Technology in the Theatre Department, School of Performing Arts, at University of Central Florida, in Orlando, Florida. She holds an MFA degree in Costume Design from Utah State University and a BFA degree from the Central Academy of Drama in Beijing.

Besides teaching, Prof. Tan enjoys designing costume/makeup for departmental theatre productions and professional theatres. Her costume designs were recognized by the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival Region IV for the Meritorious Achievement Award – Excellence in Costume Design, Outstanding Teaching Artist, and Distinguished Achievement in Costume Design. Prof. Tan’s professional credits include the works Three River Shakespeare Festival in Pittsburgh, PA; Historic Liberty Theatre in Washington, WA; Orlando Repertory Theatre, FL; The Lambs players Theatre, San Diego, CA; and Department of Theatre, Film & Dance, at Cornell University.

Prof. Tan is an author of two books Character Costume Figure Drawing 3rd edition in 2018, and Costume Craftwork on a Budget 2nd edition 2019, published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York and London. The Character Costume Figure Drawing 3rd edition was published in Spanish by Grupo Anaya, S.A. Madrid, Spain 2019. Prof. Tan is a member of United Scenic Artists, local 829.

Prof. Tan has a great passion for Indian dance costumes and makeup. Her Fulbright-Nehru research seeks to focus on participation by direct observation, interaction, and hands-on practice involved in the creative process to learn different types of classical dance costume/makeup design, material, and construction. The research also intends to also provide firsthand knowledge of dance costume styles and construction techniques from local professionals’ original works. Writing a book on Indian dance costume will provide opportunities to introduce and promote Indian dance costume art to the world.

Venkateswaran Narayanaswamy

Dr. Venkat Narayanaswamy is an Associate Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. He obtained his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin and bachelor’s degree at IIT Madras, both in Aerospace Engineering. He was a postdoctoral fellow at RWTH Aachen, Germany, before joining the faculty of North Carlina State University.

Dr. Narayanaswamy’s research is in the area of combustion and aerodynamics. He focuses on complex processes of turbulent flows with emphasis on emerging clean energy and future transport. His work emphasizes advancing the current state of the art using cutting edge measurement technologies. The tools that were developed in his lab provided novel insights into the underlying flow and chemical processes that cause soot emissions. These tools will be extended to the host institution to obtain foundational understanding of the chemical processes that trigger forest fires and the aerodynamic interactions that cause the fires to spread over large geographic areas. This research can significantly advance the ability to predict the occurrence and spread of forest fires that will help develop early fire warning systems and fire probability maps that can help strategize future regional development.

Dr. Narayanaswamy has authored over 80 publications in this topical area, including an Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics article in 2014. He has been recognized with numerous research awards and honors including the AFRL Summer Faculty Fellowship (2022), AFOSR Young Investigator Award (2016), and ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship (2016). He is also an alumnus of National Academy of Engineering’s US Frontiers of Engineering, Class of 2020. Dr. Narayanaswamy also served as an international coordinator on the SPARC award in India and is among the invitees of the VAIBHAV meet organized by the government of India.

A multiscale multi-organization research initiative is proposed to leap the current state of the art on the forecast and early warning of Indian forest fires. Dr. Narayanaswamy’s Fulbright-Nehru research aims to focus on making quantitative predictions of fire initiation probabilities and spreading rates in representative sub-Himalayan vegetation, weather, and terrain conditions. The objectives include: 1) Develop ab-initio chemical kinetics models for gasification and pyrolysis of representative organic vegetation. 2) Obtain models for crown fire initiation and spreading that are tuned for representative wind conditions and terrain. 3) Incorporate the model into in-house or commercial software and validate with existing data.

Mark Balmforth

Dr. Mark Balmforth is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. His work analyses inherited inequality in histories of encounter between South Asians, Europeans, and Americans. His first book project, titled “Schooling the Master: Caste Supremacy and American Education in British Ceylon,” charts the entwining of caste, nation, and gender in American missionary schools in Ceylon and was awarded the History of Education Society’s 2021 Claude A. Eggertsen Prize. Dr. Balmforth’s second major research project, tentatively titled “Buried Legacies: Slavery and Caste in the Indian Ocean,” rethinks connections between enslavement, caste, and migration in the Indian Ocean by tracing the 300-year odyssey of an oppressed-caste Tamil community from the 17th to the 20th centuries. His work has been published in the History of Education Quarterly, Review of Development & Change, CASTE: A Global Journal on Social Exclusion, and the International Journal of Asian Christianity.

Legacies of slavery shape conversations around the world about contemporary social and economic injustice. Over the last decade, scholars of South Asia have started to consider slavery’s impact on contemporary lives in the subcontinent, countering the dominant public and scholarly reliance upon terms like “bonded labor” or “agrestic servitude.” Contributing to the ongoing global conversation about slavery’s legacy, Dr. Balmforth’s Fulbright-Nehru project asks: what can the history of Dalit dye root-digging communities in India reveal about the intertwined careers of slavery and caste in South Asia?

Joshua Rosenthal

Dr. Joshua Rosenthal is a senior scientist at the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is an ecologist with a long-standing interest in the integration of public health, environment, and international development. Dr. Rosenthal completed his PhD and postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed an AAAS Science and Diplomacy Fellowship at the NIH, was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has been awarded three NIH Director’s Awards for work across the agency in support of public health and environment. Dr. Rosenthal has developed and led numerous programs at the NIH in environment and health research, as well as in capacity building in low- and middle-income countries, including the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups; the International Training and Research in Environmental and Occupational Health; Ecology of Infectious Diseases; Global Environmental and Occupational Health Research Hubs; the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network; and the Clean Cooking Implementation Science Network. Presently, Dr. Rosenthal co-chairs the NIH Working Group on Climate Change and Health. His current work is substantially focused on climate change and health, and on interventions to reduce exposure to household air pollution. Dr. Rosenthal’s research- and policy-related publications can be found at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=BztHZSIAAAAJ

While the health consequences of climate change are becoming apparent around the world, the relevant agencies are woefully underprepared to address them. From trauma, injury, and deaths resulting from extreme weather events, to increased rates of infectious diseases, chronic respiratory and mental health conditions, the world is facing profound threats to the gains in public health that have been made over the past decades. For his Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, Dr. Rosenthal is working with Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) in Chennai and other Indian institutions to develop a new master’s in public health (MPH) curriculum in the field of climate change and health.