Host City USA: Chennai

Sarah Reyes

Ms. Sarah Reyes has been teaching for 18 years and currently teaches at Abraham Depp Elementary in Dublin City School District, Ohio. She obtained her bachelor’s in music education and master’s in music education with Kodály certification from Capital University, Ohio, and spent a year studying music pedagogy at the Kodály Institute of Music in Kesckemét, Hungary. She was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to study the music of Johann Sebastian Bach at a summer institute in Germany. All through her career, Ms. Reyes has been teaching general music and choir for students in the age group of five to 18. She has also hosted numerous musical activities for students outside of school, including choirs, music clubs, and a Hindustani and Carnatic ensemble. She has served on committees on curriculum and equity, as well as on diversity and inclusion in her school district. Her teaching experience includes rural, urban, and suburban school settings.

Ms. Reyes has also served as a presenter for the Tri-City Kodály Educators, Organization of American Kodály Educators, the International Kodály Society, and for graduate students at Capital University on the topic of inclusion of diverse music and cultures in music classrooms and choral settings. She is continuously seeking to expand her knowledge and has studied Brazilian music with bricante Estêvão Marques, Cuban rumba with Josh Ryan, West African music with Sowah Mensah, and mridangam and Carnatic music with Mysore Vadiraj. She loves being inspired by her students to learn new things, travel to destinations unknown, and nurture her innate curiosity for learning by seeing the world through many different lenses.

As part of her Fulbright project studying Carnatic music in India, Ms. Reyes is collecting musical materials and pedagogical practices to share with her learning community and the music education community. She believes that her immersive experience in India will enable her to engage with her students in Dublin and the greater music education community across the U.S. and elsewhere – all along reflecting the contexts of her learning community, honoring multiple learning modalities, and embracing music as a universal human experience.

Paul Ward

Paul Ward is a recent graduate of Columbia University in New York City, with a bachelor’s degree in American history. Paul’s undergraduate studies focused on 18th-century revolutionary America, with an emphasis on constitutional law and nation building. He has also been studying Italian for the past two years and hopes to continue learning it during and after his Fulbright grant.

Paul began his teaching career with the New York City Urban Debate League in 2019 and has been interested in education ever since. As both a teacher and administrator, Paul helped the largest debate league in New York put on weekly tournaments that involved thousands of students from across the city. A debater since high school, Paul enjoys discussing world news and trends, and tries to implement these exercises into his lessons whenever he can.

In the area of education access, Paul participated as a teaching fellow with the nonprofit, Breakthrough Collaborative. At Breakthrough, he managed his own daily classroom and created a unique social studies curriculum for his class of middle school students in the Boston public school system. Paul’s curriculum challenged students to reflect on the American Dream and their role as citizens, and he is excited to personally reflect on these topics from a different perspective while abroad.

Outside of the classroom, Paul is interested in music and sports. He has played bass in jazz and rock bands for more than 10 years and is eager to bring this expertise abroad to teach others about the role of music in American culture. He is also an avid runner and completed his first half-marathon this April. In India, he looks forward to staying up late to watch his favorite baseball team, the New York Yankees, play live back home.

Paul’s grant period in India will be the first time he has ever lived abroad, and he cannot wait to meet lots of interesting people and to see the world from a new perspective.

Colleen Choate

Colleen Choate graduated from Appalachian State University in 2017 with a bachelor’s in dance studies and a minor in Spanish. Deeply connected to the creative and expressive art communities on campus, she has performed in the fall and spring Appalachian Dance Ensemble for multiple years, organized and performed in public poetry readings, held concerts for her own choreographies, and served on The Peel Literature & Arts Review poetry committee. The focus of her scholarly work and thesis was the connection between language and the body as a somatic and expressive experience. As a choreographer and as a yoga instructor, she has realized that her greatest strength lies in facilitating experiences and in holding space for others to express themselves.

Colleen was introduced to Indian philosophy in a yoga class during her freshman year in college, and she has never looked back. She began reading such texts as the Bhagavad Gita and Devi Mahatmya. Her desire for deeper connection and authentic relationship with these teachings led her to India in 2019, where she toured its southern part, visiting temples, exploring places, and of course, eating amazing food.

In 2020, she decided to switch career paths and took a TEFL course to receive her teaching certification and began working with the English Language Program students at Virginia Commonwealth University. She quickly took to the role, especially in terms of building relationships with students, which led to her current role as the global learning coordinator in the Global Education Office at Virginia Commonwealth University.

In this role, she works daily with international students studying in the United States. This includes planning and implementing cultural events and social programs to support these students. These programs help them connect with one another, as well as with domestic students, and foster community, cultural competence, and personal growth. Colleen is excited about the opportunity that the Fulbright-Nehru grant offers to work with students every day, learn from them, and find rewarding ways to build relationships through education.

Ren Birnholz

Ren Birnholz (they/them/theirs) is an honors graduate of Northeastern University where they majored in cultural anthropology and theatre and minored in women, gender, and sexuality studies. During Ren’s time at Northeastern, they worked as a research assistant in two creative practice research labs focused on the intersections of performing arts, education, identity, and social justice. Ren’s fascination with this field led them to complete an ethnographic thesis entitled “Creating Community through Interrupted Dialogue on TransTok”, which explored how young content creators use social media to build community. They also explored how creative content is utilized to educate individuals outside of a community.

In addition to their academics, Ren spent their time as a campus leader and student advocate. Most notably, Ren led initiatives that expanded access to mental healthcare and reproductive healthcare for the entire student body. They also worked as a resident assistant for three years, mentoring first-year students as they entered the university landscape.

Ren discovered their passion for teaching at a young age. In secondary school, they worked as a theatre and dance camp counselor and as a religious schoolteacher at their local synagogue. As an undergraduate student, they completed two six-month internships: the first as a full-time elementary music teacher; and the second as the sexual misconduct and bias case manager for Boston Public Schools. Outside of a formal educational setting, Ren designs curriculum and leads workshops for reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ organizations.

After studying at Ashoka University in Sonipat, Haryana, in the summer of 2022, Ren is excited to be returning to India as an English teaching assistant through the Fulbright-Nehru grant. While Ren has explored the American education system in depth, through this program they will further their capability as an educator tied to experiences of cultural exchange.

Amariyah Ayee

Amariyah Ayee is a recent graduate of Duke University with a master’s degree in biomedical science. While at Duke, she volunteered with seniors in the Durham community and also served on the volunteer committee. She graduated from Claflin University as a valedictorian in 2022 with a degree in biology and a minor in chemistry. At Claflin, she enjoyed tutoring students as a supplemental instructor and also volunteered at the University Writing Center and Boys and Girls Club.

Amariyah has always desired to be a physician and serve individuals in underserved communities. She has been accepted to medical school on a full tuition scholarship, which she plans to pursue following her Fulbright experience. She is excited to serve as a cultural ambassador and share her love for learning with her students.

Sulapha Peethamparan

Dr. Sulapha Peethamparan is a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Clarkson University, New York. She received her PhD from Purdue University, MEng from the National University of Singapore, MS from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, and BTech from Mahatma Gandhi University, all in civil engineering. Prior to joining Clarkson University, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton University. Dr. Peethamparan has over 15 years of research and teaching experience in cement, aggregate, and concrete materials. Her recent work involves various aspects of the development of alternative or low carbon concrete such as high-volume fly ash concrete, bio-cement concrete, alkali-activated or geopolymers concrete. The primary objectives of these studies are to determine the fresh, hardened, and durability performances of such low carbon concrete and their underlying physiochemical mechanisms. Her expertise also includes CO2/NOx sequestration technologies in concrete. Dr. Peethamparan’s research work has been supported by various agencies that include the National Science Foundation, the Federal Highway Administration, New York State Energy Research and Department Authority, and New York State Pollution Prevention Institute. She has authored/co-authored over 100 technical papers and reports. Dr. Peethamparan is also an associate editor of the ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, chair of the Concrete Research Counsel at the American Concrete Institute, and fellow of the American Concrete Institute. She is a recipient of the 2010 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development award.

The environmental impact of CO2 emission from portland cement production and the role of the concrete industry in global warming sparked the need to develop more sustainable, alternative low carbon concrete for construction. India, the second-largest cement producer in the world, reported an emission of over 250 million metric tons of CO2 in the year 2020. The main objective of this Fulbright research is to explore the viability of producing low carbon portland cement-free geopolymer concrete using locally available industrial byproducts in India and solid alkali activators through the one-part alkali activation technology. In her project, Dr. Peethamparan is also developing new course material covering several alternative cement technologies.

Preetha Mani

Dr. Preetha Mani received her BA from Tufts University and her MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Mani is associate professor of South Asian literatures in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL) and core faculty member in the program in comparative literature at Rutgers University. She is the author of The Idea of Indian Literature: Gender, Genre, and Comparative Method (Northwestern University Press and Permanent Black, 2022). Her research expertise lies in modern Hindi, Tamil, and Indian literatures, and she has published widely on issues of translation, women’s writing, and feminism in India; literary realism and modernism; postcolonial studies; and world literature. She has also published translations of Hindi and Tamil literature, autobiography, and criticism into English. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, American Institute of Indian Studies, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Fulbright.

Dr. Mani’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining Tamil new poetry, a form of modernist free verse that became popular in 1950s’ magazines and set a benchmark against which later poets defined their work. By the 1980s, new poetry writing had democratized the poetic form. Exploring new poetry’s development in print culture, she is proposing that this genre was a primary avenue for writers to cross ideological boundaries and to draw inspiration from each other and from writers in other Indian and world languages. Dr. Mani’s research is attempting to demonstrate that rather than being a linguistic outlier to the national canon, Tamil new poetry was a means for generating ideas for a postcolonial pan-Indian literature built on the poetic form.

Samhita Vasu

Samhita Vasu graduated from Johns Hopkins Engineering on a Hodson Trust Scholarship with a BS in biomedical engineering in May 2024. She is interested in the use of microphysiological systems, medical device design, data science, and signal processing to help understand, diagnose, and treat life-threatening diseases. At Johns Hopkins, she worked on heart-on-chip assays for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) drug screening, as well as on the use of engineered heart tissues to study mitochondrial dysfunction in DMD; she also studied the neurodevelopmental outcomes of renal anhydramnios fetal therapy. Besides, she worked in Stanford’s Cardiac MRI Research Group to study cardiac MRI texture analysis for better tracking of the disease progression of DMD. As an intern for NASA Ames Research Center, she developed a spaceflight environmental data visualization tool for the Rodent Research missions to the International Space Station. Apart from research, Samhita was involved in the Johns Hopkins’ Biomedical Engineering Design Teams program, through which she designed, built, and validated various medical devices and solutions. One such project involved building a flexible arthroscope to increase visualization to the posterior compartment of the knee. Another project involved building a more precise shave biopsy device to prevent melanoma transection. She also led a team to develop a generative AI, image-based medical information translation solution for patients with low English proficiency. Samhita was the first author of an article titled “Biomaterials-based Approaches for Cardiac Regeneration” and was also awarded the Dr. Stanley Hellerstein Memorial Travel Award.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a debilitating condition that impacts around 140 million people in India. Fifty per cent of patients with CKD in India are first seen by a healthcare professional when their disease has progressed to the extent of kidney failure. Given India’s low physician-to-patient ratio, at-home monitoring can expedite diagnosis and improve treatment. In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Samhita is working with CKD specialists to design and validate a saliva-based creatinine sensor that can measure kidney function at home. The goal is to develop a working device that helps catch CKD symptoms early in at-risk patients.

Aditi Anand

Aditi Anand is an undergraduate student majoring in computer engineering at Purdue University. She is also pursuing a minor in biology and a concentration in artificial intelligence (AI). Aditi intends to pursue a career in healthcare and is specifically interested in applications of AI in the field of medicine. Her research has explored creating more brain-like artificial neural networks; improving the robustness of AI models used in medical imaging; and early and low-cost diagnosis of congestive heart failure. Aditi has received the Presidential Scholarship, Paul and Peggy Reising Scholarship, Stimson Family Scholarship, and Charles W. Brown Scholarship, all from Purdue University. She has also received the National Honorable Mention Award for Aspirations in Computing from the National Center for Women & Information Technology and the Sigma Xi Top STEM Talk Award at the Purdue Spring Undergraduate Research Conference. Aditi has served as a crisis intervention specialist for Mental Health America; as an emergency room volunteer at the IU Arnett Hospital, Lafayette; as vice chair of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Purdue Student Chapter; as vice president of WorldHealth Purdue; and as event coordinator for the Indian Classical Music Association at Purdue. She has also volunteered for Udavum Karangal, Chennai, organizing personal hygiene and health awareness workshops, and for the Ankit Foundation Corp to develop a mobile app for mental health.

In her Fulbright-Nehru program, Aditi is working with the Robert Bosch Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Indian Institute of Technology (RBC-DSAI) in Chennai to develop a high-performing AI model that can be deployed in Indian clinical conditions to diagnose breast cancer through low-cost mammograms. The model that she is developing with Dr. Balaraman Ravindran’s team at RBC-DSAI seeks to overcome the challenges that India and other countries face due to lack of resources and access to radiologists.