Host City USA: Mumbai

Rhea Chandran

Rhea Chandran graduated from Haverford College with a BA in history in 2023. She was born and raised in Geneva, Illinois, by immigrant parents from India. She attended Phillips Academy Andover where she discovered her passion for advocacy and humanities research. At Haverford, she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow where she was supported by the Mellon Foundation to conduct independent research and prepare for graduate studies. She also served as the co-chair of the Honor Council; as a student representative on a faculty committee on student academic standing; and as a co-organizer of the first-year orientation program. She has worked for the House Committee on Homeland Security; for the Office of Congresswoman Lauren Underwood; for BallotReady; and for the American Business Immigration Coalition.

Rhea’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the historical and sociological impacts on women who exit commercial sex work in India. She is conducting archive-based historical analysis to trace the impacts of modern India’s laws governing prostitution. Her historical research is informing her sociological study which focuses on documenting casework and collecting interview data from these women to discern the best pathways for rehabilitation. Rhea’s research is seeking to answer integral questions related to how the history of criminalization of prostitution affects sex workers today.

Annika Agarwal

Annika Agarwal graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a major in anthropology in May 2023. While in school, she was the campus chairperson of Global Brigades where she organized menstrual products for communities in Honduras. She also founded Screen to Street, an organization that conducts home visits and educational programs for Latina women in their prenatal and postpartum periods. Besides, she worked as a birth doula at Magee-Womens Hospital, Pittsburgh, where she helped countless mothers during their birthing experience. One of her most valuable undergraduate experiences was developing her research skills and repertoire through Dr. Sara Baumann’s lab in Pittsburgh. During that time, she spent a summer in Mumbai, working with orphan girls to understand institutionalized menstrual practices, attitudes, and knowledge production. She has also worked on projects related to Collaborative Filmmaking, a participatory arts-based method, to understand the postpartum experiences of women in Pittsburgh. Annika will build on these experiences and skills through her Fulbright year. Ultimately, she hopes to attend medical school and continue her work on women’s health research globally.

Due to insufficient sanitary services, slum women in Dharavi, Mumbai, face a predicament. While they use dilapidated community toilets that make menstruation a communal issue, taboos perpetuate a clandestine culture. Of the sparse research that has been done on menstrual disposal, men and elders stand excluded. Therefore, this Fulbright study asks: “What are the attitudes, practices, and knowledge around menstrual disposal among men and women of different ages in Dharavi?” For her research, Annika is using Collaborative Filmmaking to co-create films on menstrual disposal with the residents. This study will contribute to the knowledge on differential bodily autonomy based on gender, a prominent issue in both the U.S. and India.

Nandini Deo

Dr. Nandini Deo is an associate professor of political science at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA. She is the author of Mobilizing Religion and Gender in India, the co-author (along with Duncan McDuie Ra) of The Politics of Collective Advocacy in India: Tools and Traps, and has edited a volume called Postsecular Feminisms: Gender and Religion in Transnational Perspective. Currently, she is finishing work on a monograph on civil society and corporate collaboration in India. In 2022, Dr. Deo was awarded Lehigh’s highest teaching award. She is also an advocate of student collaboration in curriculum development and her latest interest is in unconventional educational experiments – unschooling and self-directed education.

In Mumbai, as part of her Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Deo is sharing findings from her research on the aftermath of the 2013 revisions to the Indian Companies Act which created a new arena of corporate social responsibility. These revisions require large corporations to donate at least 2 per cent of their annual profits to social causes and strongly encourage them to partner with NGOs. The result has been a huge influx of corporate funding and influence in the social inclusion and sustainable development spheres. Through her project, based on insights from business leaders, NGO activists, and the new intermediaries who connect them, Dr. Deo is showing that this influence is not reciprocal – that is, corporate social responsibility seems to change NGOs more than it changes the businesses involved in it. Besides, as an award-winning teacher, she is also sharing exciting pedagogical approaches with colleagues who want to explore “ungrading” and “student-centered” and “active learning” curriculum designs. She is expecting that her work will build connections with the faculty in India wherein an annual U.S.–India course can be created and co-taught which will benefit the students of both her home and host universities.

Bopaya Bidanda

Dr. Bopaya Bidanda is the Ernest E. Roth Professor at the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. He returned to the faculty in 2021 after over 21 years as department chair. His recent books include The Business of Humanity (Routledge), Virtual Prototyping & Bio Manufacturing in Medical Applications (second edition, Springer), The Evolution of Project Management (PMI Press), and the Maynard’s Industrial & Systems Engineering Handbook (sixth edition, McGraw Hill) that serve as the definitive corpus of knowledge in industrial engineering.

Dr. Bidanda is the former president of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and has also served as the president of the Council of Industrial Engineering Academic Department Heads. Besides, he has served on the international advisory boards of universities in India and South America. Moreover, he has had visiting professorships in Singapore and Turkey. Dr. Bidanda is also a fellow of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and a member of the ABET Board (of Delegates). Besides, he served on the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET for almost a decade.

He received the 2012 John L. Imhoff Award for Global Excellence in Industrial Engineering given by the American Society for Engineering Education. He has also received the International Federation of Engineering Education Societies’ 2012 Global Award for Excellence in Engineering Education and the 2013 Albert G. Holzman Distinguished Educator Award given by the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers.

Dr. Bidanda also helped initiate and institutionalize the Engineering Program on the Semester at Sea voyage in 2004. Most recently, he has been actively engaged in the Business of Humanity project in Pittsburgh and India. In addition, his Manufacturing Assistance Center initiative that provides meaningful careers to those at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid, including to convicted felons and homeless veterans, now has multiple international locations.

Dr. Bidanda’s Fulbright-Nehru project is working towards accomplishing three objectives: interact closely with the industrial engineering doctoral students and new faculty at the National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, and throughout India via an interactive doctoral colloquium; explore the nascent field of frugal engineering; and monitor a workforce development-based research project in Gujarat. These activities are expected to further develop and hone the scholarship and research capabilities of industrial engineering students and faculty.

Leslie Shampaine

Ms. Leslie Shampaine has been telling stories throughout her professional life, from the ballet stage where she performed across the world during a 13-year career, to the television screen where she has produced award-winning programs for PBS, Discovery Channel, A&E, CBS, and Al Jazeera.

Her background in the arts led her to produce and direct the feature documentary, Call Me Dancer, in 2023. The film has received critical acclaim and an award from the New York Women in Film & Television for Excellence in Documentary Directing.

Ms. Shampaine’s work includes cultural and educational programming. For eight years, she was part of the production team that created the biographical films for the Emmy Award-winning Kennedy Center Honors. She was senior production executive at Al Jazeera English in Washington, D.C., where she managed current affairs programming in North America, including the award-winning investigative series, Fault Lines and People & Power, and the discussion programs, The Stream, Upfront, and Empire.

Ms. Shampaine produced the PBS programs One World: India; Closer to Truth: Cosmos, Consciousness and Meaning; and Avoiding Armageddon. Her other productions include Who Betrayed Anne Frank (Discovery Channel) – winner of a Telly, a Cine Golden Eagle, and a Gold Remi at the Houston World Fest; DC Cupcakes (TLC); the Smithsonian Networks series’ Seriously Amazing Objects; and Fireworks (A&E, with George Plimpton), which was nominated for an Emmy and an ACE.

She has continued to work as a teaching artist to youth from underserved backgrounds and to seniors with physical disabilities. She has taught dance to children at the Lighthouse for the Blind; worked with seniors to record their personal stories for NPR’s StoryCorps; and taught movement to people with Parkinson’s disease through Dance for PD.

Ms. Shampaine’s Fulbright-Nehru project is seeking to understand the methodologies of arts education with a focus on digital storytelling as it is directed toward underserved youth. Her research is looking at the blossoming of the digital format and how it is impacting storytelling, teaching, communication, and most significantly, participation in a worldwide community. Besides, she is starting the social-impact stage of her film project, Call Me Dancer, to create culturally relevant videos targeted toward youth, to be used by teachers and arts educators. She is also creating short-form videos with curriculum guides for teachers who engage students in meaningful examinations of relevant social issues.

Harshini Venkatachalam

Harshini Venkatachalam has a BA in computer science and visual art from Brown University. For six semesters, she was a teaching assistant in the computer science department at Brown and received a Senior Prize for contributions to the department. Harshini is broadly interested in using computing and technology for social good.

Harshini’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing technology to help learners develop computational thinking skills. Computational thinking encompasses a range of skills in problem solving and system design, with one key skill being abstraction – the ability to overcome complexity by generalizing solutions. Harshini’s project is motivated by the need to understand how novice programmers learn abstraction within the existing pedagogy and thus develop novel methods to help them learn abstraction. During her study, in the course of development of tools, data is also being collected about participant engagement. The deliverables of the project include a novel tool (a mobile application), a literature review, and a detailed report.

Isha Padhye

Isha Padhye has a BA in public policy from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. At UNC, she served in various roles in Student Government. Her senior honors thesis was on misinformation. Most recently, she worked as a research associate at the University of Chicago, helping in projects focused on U.S. healthcare policy. Isha was also a U.S. Global Health Corps Fellow from June 2023–May 2024. Her research interests lie in universal healthcare coverage, women’s health, and youth empowerment.

Isha’s Fulbright-Nehru study, based in Mumbai, is evaluating the impact of community health workers, known as Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs), on menstrual education among the youth in India. It is examining how ASHAs are serving as a resource to menstruating girls and how they are educating these girls. For this, Isha is conducting in-depth interviews with girls between the ages of 13–18 and with ASHA focus groups. This research hopes to make a significant contribution to the growing field of menstrual health management.

Sandhya Kumar

Sandhya Kumar received an MPH in health policy with a concentration in global health from the Yale School of Public Health in May 2024. She was part of the accelerated five-year BA/MPH program and received her bachelor’s degree in global affairs and global health from Yale College. She grew up in Rochester, Minnesota.

At Yale, Sandhya volunteered with the Neighborhood Health Project in New Haven to provide free blood pressure and blood sugar screening at a food pantry and also led a summer international relations and leadership institute for high schoolers; she was also co-president of the South Asian Society.

Sandhya has interned with the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau on Population, Refugees, and Migration in Washington, D.C., working on initiatives related to sexual and reproductive health. She has also interned with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance in Geneva, where she worked on routine immunization projects.

Sandhya’s Fulbright-Nehru project is studying the sexual and reproductive health of women migrants in Mumbai. The existing studies on COVID-19’s impact on India have overlooked the gendered effects of pandemic-fueled migration, notably in the area of sexual and reproductive health (SRH). Sandhya’s project is assessing women migrants’ access to SRH services, including to sexually transmitted infection screenings, family planning, and maternal care. In this context, she is engaging with local organizations that assist Mumbai’s migrant workers, interviewing women migrants, and understanding state and local government responses.

Shaili Gandhi

Shaili Gandhi is passionate about improving the health and well-being of underserved populations, with a particular commitment to people who use drugs, people living with mental illness, and immigrant communities. Shaili received her undergraduate degree from New York University in 2020 and completed her master’s in public health with a concentration in community health from the City University of New York in 2022. While completing her MPH, she worked for the Viral Hepatitis Program at the NYC Department of Health and Mental Health where she supported Hepatitis B and C care navigation programs. During this time, she helped facilitate a space for peer and patient navigators to stay abreast of relevant policy changes, created meaningful referral relationships, and troubleshot cases. Moreover, upon noticing a dearth of resources tailored to the South Asian community in New York, she and her colleagues worked together to develop the South Asian Hepatitis Initiative (SAHI). After her master’s, Shali joined the New York University Health x Housing Lab as a research coordinator. There, she developed her qualitative research skills by conducting an evaluation of a telephone-based nurse triage service in NYC homeless shelters. She is presently using community-engaging research methods to better understand the pathways to housing for older homeless adults. Throughout her academic and professional career, Shaili has been interested in how activism and community organizing can be used to build communities of care from the ground up.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Shaili is exploring the intersecting objectives of feminism, labor activism, and health activism through a case study of India’s Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA). SEWA implements a health service delivery model that simultaneously serves the community and promotes economic independence for their health workers by training grassroots organizers to provide health services within their own villages. Shaili is using qualitative methods to understand how SEWA has traversed the boundary between trade union and public health without sacrificing the core components of either. Her research aims to shed light on how to build sustainable, community-led solutions to promote health security for all.

Priya Nambisan

Dr. Priya Nambisan is a tenured associate professor at the Joseph J. Zilber College of Public Health at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the founder and director of two labs: the Social Media and Health Research & Training (SMAHRT) Lab; and the Aging Research & Digital Technologies (ARDT) Lab. She has a multidisciplinary background in terms of her education, work experience, and research. She has an undergrad degree in public health and extension education from India, a master’s degree in nutrition from Syracuse University, a PhD in communication and technology from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a postdoc in health informatics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has also been a registered dietitian. She has lived and worked in India, Singapore, and the U.S..

Dr. Nambisan has conducted extensive research in areas like public health; wellness and prevention; personal health information management; patient–provider communication; online communities; and digital technologies for self-care. Her current research focuses on the use of new digital technologies and data analytics techniques (prediction modeling and machine learning) for providing social, emotional, and informational support to health consumers and patients. She has over 60 research publications and over 20 conference presentations. She has also delivered several invited talks, organized special sessions at conferences, and written invited book chapters on the above topics.

For the last few years, Dr. Nambisan has been immersed in building and validating a digital self- care platform for older adults who are dealing with multiple chronic conditions. The platform – known as Comprehensive Digital Self-care Support System (CDSSS), aka myHESTIA (my Healing Ecosystem for Self-care and Therapeutic Integration for the Aging) – enables older adults to keep track of their health, reduce stress, and improve sleep using digital healing tools.

Dr. Nambisan’s Fulbright-Nehru project is adapting the CDSSS-myHESTIA platform to fit the Indian context. The aim is to provide support for the physical, mental, and social health needs of older adults. The project also aims to enhance CDSSS-myHESTIA by incorporating elements such as Indian ways of healthy aging.