Host City USA: Kochi

Ram Mohan

Professor Ram Mohan earned his BSc in chemistry from Hansraj College in Delhi, India, an MSc in organic chemistry from the University of Delhi, India, and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (under Professor Dale Whalen), USA. He did his postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (in Professor Robert Coates’s lab) and started his independent academic career at Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU). He is currently the Wendell and Loretta Hess Professor of Chemistry at IWU.

Professor Mohan’s research, carried out exclusively by undergraduate students, focuses on environmentally friendly organic synthesis using bismuth compounds. To date, he has supervised over 140 IWU undergraduates and published 68 manuscripts co-authored by them. He is especially committed to raising awareness about green chemistry in rural India and often travels to remote parts of India.

He is also the recipient of several awards, such as: the University of Maryland, Baltimore County 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award; the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award; the Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (St. Louis Green Chemistry Team) Green Chemistry Award; Chemist of the Year 2011 (Illinois Heartland Section of the American Chemical Society); the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Environmental Improvement Award for incorporating sustainability into chemistry education; the 2023 Kemp Award for Teaching Excellence (from IWU); and the Fulbright Teacher Scholar Award in 2012, 2019, and 2023.

Feler Bose

Dr. Feler Bose is an economics and finance professor at Indiana University East. His undergraduate studies culminated in degrees in engineering physics and chemistry from Hope College, Michigan. He then completed his MS in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia. He worked for a few years in the paper industry before realizing his interests were not in engineering. He returned to school and received his PhD in economics from George Mason University, Virginia.

Dr. Bose’s research is multifaceted, encompassing applied microeconomics, political economy, law and economics, and the economics of religion. His current investigations delve into the impact of legislative structures on power dynamics, the significance of culture in societal development, and the opportunity cost associated with sexual freedom. His scholarly contributions extend beyond the academia. He has numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals and has authored book chapters, law briefs, a book, and regulatory analyses. He has also presented his research at several national and international outlets, addressing a diverse audience of both professionals and lay people. He is a member of various professional organizations, and his outstanding contributions to teaching and research have earned him multiple awards at his university.

Aditya Santoki

Mr. Aditya Santoki graduated from Duke University in 2021 cum laude as a Chemistry major. While at Duke, Mr. Santoki was a neurobiology researcher in Dr. Cagla Eroglu’s lab and investigated the rate of neuronal cell death in Huntington’s Disease. Having self-studied computer science in college, Mr. Santoki designed a program that would characterize the rate of neuronal cell delineated by brain region, eventually seeing his work published as a second-author in Cell Reports. Additionally, while at Duke, Mr. Santoki was also deeply involved in health policy research. After having taken an Introduction to the U.S. Healthcare System class with Dr. Nathan Boucher, Mr. Santoki designed an independent project to assess the determinants of vaccine hesitancy in Durham County. As a part of his project, Mr. Santoki interviewed physicians and patients to find that even brief physician-led conversations on the safety and efficacy of vaccines could drastically reduce vaccine-hesitancy. Most importantly, Mr. Santoki learned how effective physician-led conversations on treatment could drastically affect patient care. This sparked Mr. Santoki’s interest in understanding how cost of care conversations on a national scale could reduce financial toxicity for patients. Since then, Mr. Santoki has published his work on vaccine hesitancy as a first-author in the North Carolina Medical Journal (NCMJ).

After graduating from Duke University, Mr. Santoki has been working as a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At the NIH, Mr. Santoki routinely shadows neurooncologists having cost of care discussions with terminal cancer patients. Through these conversations Mr. Santoki has seen how patients can make much more informed decisions about their care and plan personalized and affordable courses of treatment. Moreover, Mr. Santoki has also been exposed to the potential of personalized medicine while working in Dr. Claire Le Pichon’s lab. While in the Le Pichon lab, Mr. Santoki has been assisting a project characterizing a novel mouse model of a rare form of ALS. Mr. Santoki has also been working part-time at a biopharma venture capital firm investigating drug pricing for rare disease therapeutics. Both these experiences have sparked Mr. Santoki’s interest in translating personalized therapeutics and ensuring they are affordable for patients. In his free time Mr. Santoki enjoys reading, weightlifting, and running.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Mr. Santoki is travelling to medical centers throughout Kerala to survey oncologists treating cancer patients. He is assessing physician awareness of treatment costs and low-cost alternatives. If time permits, Mr. Santoki aims to assess patients’ willingness to pay for genomic assays to define need for adjuvant chemotherapy for breast cancer. He is also estimating the proportion of patients who get colitis after starting immunotherapy. These analyses will help physicians determine whether cost conversations on preventative treatments can prevent future expenses.