Mumbai Archives - Page 2 of 4

Roshni Bhat

Roshni Bhat received her BS in biopsychology from Tufts University in May 2023. After graduation, she transitioned from her role as an ophthalmic technician to clinical research assistant at Massachusetts Eye and Ear where she joined the Harvard Ophthalmology Metabolomics in Retina (HOMeR) lab, investigating biomarkers for age-related macular degeneration. In this role, she has successfully presented twice at the annual Association of Research in Vision and Ophthalmology conference and most recently at a New England Ophthalmology Society meeting. Prior to her work at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, Roshni had worked closely with ophthalmologists across the globe to help organize the first Global Refractive Surgery Summit which addressed systemic and specific barriers to accessing refractive surgery, a procedure that can help reduce preventable blindness stemming from uncorrected refractive error. Roshni has also assisted with education research and program design at Tufts University School of Medicine’s Center for Science Education.

Beyond her professional endeavors, Roshni is a lifelong learner who loves to teach as well. She is a classically trained Bharatanatyam dancer, plays tennis and soccer, and is also a trained violinist and vocalist. She is an avid reader and baker who loves to explore.

Roshni’s Fulbright-Nehru research is evaluating the functional vision outcomes for pediatric retinoblastoma patients in order to provide valuable insight into the current standard of care and the efficacy of new treatments. Based in Mumbai, she is working closely with the physicians at Tata Memorial Hospital to assess whether new technologies that salvage parts of the eye are providing significant functional vision outcomes in retinoblastoma patients.

Brinda Gaitonde Nayak

Ms. Brinda Gaitonde Nayak works remotely as a consultant writing nomination dossiers and site management plans for World Heritage Sites in India while being based in USA. She is also the co-founder of The Bombay Heritage Walks, an organization that undertakes architectural walking tours in Mumbai. She holds a master’s in architectural conservation from Sir J.J. College of Architecture and a bachelor’s from the Academy of Architecture, both in Mumbai. After staying away from architecture for several years, Ms. Nayak decided to relearn the profession by completing the George Mason University’s graduate certificate program in digital history, which was where her vision for the Practical Preservation Series took shape. She has written several articles, co-authored papers and other publications, as well as written a book of historical fiction titled The Path. She is currently pursuing her PhD in conservation studies from the University of York, UK.

Ms. Nayak has won several prestigious grants that include the Charles Wallace India Trust fellowship, library research grants from Getty Foundation and Duke University, and has also received the National Diversity Scholar award from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Besides, her work on restoring buildings in India have won several UNESCO Asia-Pacific awards.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Nayak, who also teaches an undergraduate elective course, Conservation Basics, in a hybrid format at the Academy of Architecture, Mumbai, is developing this course for broader applicability in other areas in India to promote greater involvement of emerging professionals in the field of historic preservation. The course is also introducing to the students current digital tools in documentation and preservation.

Arun Yethiraj

Dr. Arun Yethiraj was born in India and received his BTech in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. He received an MS from Louisiana State University, a PhD from North Carolina State University, working with Professor Carol Hall, and did postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois, working with Professor Kenneth Schweizer. He joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin in 1993. His research interest is in the statistical mechanics of complex fluids, including polymers, surfactants, ionic liquids, and biopolymers.

His hobbies include tennis, guitar, and running.

“Active matter” refers to a class of systems that are composed of self-propelled entities that convert stored energy into directed motion. The goal of Dr. Yethiraj’s Fulbright-Nehru research is to obtain a fundamental understanding of active matter in complex environments. His research project at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is using computational studies with machine learning analyses to reproduce experimental studies on robotic and molecular systems in order to obtain a fundamental understanding of the effect of crowding and noise on active processes, thereby allowing for the elucidation of transport mechanisms in other systems.

Emily Kumpel

Dr. Emily Kumpel is an associate professor in civil and environmental engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research advances sustainable and equitable drinking water systems through innovative approaches to water quality, household storage, and data science applications. With over 40 peer-reviewed publications on topics such as intermittent water supply, disinfection byproducts, water quality monitoring, and small water systems, she has secured more than $15 million in funding from NSF, EPA, Massachusetts agencies, and private foundations. Her current projects include an NSF CAREER award investigating household water storage as a reliability strategy, and extensive partnership work with the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP). She leads comprehensive drinking water assistance programs for the state of Massachusetts, including support for complying with the Safe Drinking Water Act, research on emerging contaminants among small and disadvantaged communities, lead testing in schools and childcare facilities, and small systems technical assistance. She has received multiple awards such as the College of Engineering Barbara H. and Joseph J. Goldstein Outstanding Junior Faculty Award (2024), Outstanding Teaching Award (2022), and a PIT@UMass Faculty Fellowship (2024). Dr. Kumpel serves as associate editor for AWWA Water Science and has extensive international field research experience, having lived and conducted research for over six years across India and countries in sub-Saharan Africa.

Before joining UMass in 2017, she was a senior research scientist at Aquaya Institute in Kenya, where she led water-quality monitoring and evaluation projects across multiple countries. She earned her PhD and MS in civil and environmental engineering from UC Berkeley and a BS in mechanical engineering from Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Kumpel’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing metrics for water supply continuity and predictability, testing new measurement methods, and analyzing the sources of unpredictability. She is conducting her fieldwork in and around Mumbai with the faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. The intended outcomes of the research are at least two co-authored manuscripts, mutual student mentorship, and establishment of networks to enable future research endeavors.

John (Ike) Uri

Mr. John Uri is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Brown University. He earned his BA in Sociology from the University of Kansas in 2017, before serving as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Tajikistan. He earned an MA in Sociology at Brown University in 2020. For his master’s thesis, Mr. Uri conducted interview-based research in India, working to understand how climate adaptation – efforts to reduce vulnerability to climate change – occurs in Indian cities. Such efforts are often funded by international donors, and that project illustrated how consultants, positioned between these donors and local urban officials, are a necessary part of urban adaptation planning in India. With the support of this Fulbright grant, Mr. Uri’s dissertation research will focus on these consultants and their role in urban climate adaptation, considering adaptation efforts in the city of Mumbai.

Apart from these primary research interests, Mr. Uri has conducted research at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conferences (the UN climate negotiations). In this capacity, Mr. Uri has considered the negotiations from a critical perspective, paying particular attention to the topics of climate finance and adaptation, as well as the nascent issue of loss and damage.

Cities in India face intensifying risks from the climate crisis, necessitating climate adaptation (actions and policies that reduce climate vulnerability). Urban adaptation planning is increasingly common in India, often carried out by consultants. This Fulbright-Nehru project intends to focus on these consultants, who coordinate the interests of international donors and urban officials. Using ethnographic research methods, Mr. Uri aims to embed himself in a firm in Mumbai that provides these services. The goal of this project is to better understand the ‘best practices’ of urban adaptation planning and how international norms and features of local governance impact those practices.

Maya Taylor

Ms. Maya Nashva Lyon Taylor graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in Public Health and Asian Studies and a minor in Spanish. In her time as a student, she was a Research Assistant in Dr. Gilbert Gonzales’ LGBTQ+ health laboratory. Ms. Taylor’s specific interest in the health of bisexual folks, like herself, led her to study how having a same-sex or opposite-sex partner could impact the mental health, physical health, and substance use of bi+ folks across the United States. Under Dr. Gonzales’ mentorship, Ms. Taylor published a paper that encapsulated this work entitled, “Health Disparities Among Women by Sexual Orientation Identity and Same-Sex or Different-Sex Cohabiting Partnership Status” in the journal Women’s Health Issues.

While taking a semester to study in Delhi, Ms. Taylor began studying how the 2019 Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Act mandating folks to get surgery in order to change their legal gender marker was affecting trans and other gender diverse folk in India. She spoke to several trans activists and medical providers and documented their experiences. Ms. Taylor plans to continue and expand this work during her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship. In the last year of college, Ms. Taylor wrote a thesis applying medical sociology theories of historical trauma to the Partition of the Indian subcontinent. As a part of her thesis, she wrote a short story about an Indian doctor treating patients dying of HIV/AIDS in New York City whose physician parents lived through the Partition and participated in mass sterilization campaigns of the Emergency era. After graduation, Ms. Taylor worked as a Health Educator at the Center on Halsted, a social service agency in Chicago, providing HIV testing, PrEP Navigation, and Care Coordination for her clients in English and Spanish. In her free time, Ms. Taylor loves to try cooking new dishes, playing instruments, and going for hikes.

Under the 2019 Transgender Person’s (Protection of Rights) Act, discrimination against trans people is criminalized. Despite these protections, the Act requires trans/gender diverse Indians to undergo surgery before they can legally change their gender. This study aims to determine how the Act impacts the health of transgender communities by investigating how legal documentation of gender shapes access to health resources, how healthcare providers are held accountable for providing high quality gender-affirming care, how trans and gender diverse people hope to change this Act to better reflect their needs, and how this Act impacts gender diverse visibility in society.

Adam Shaham

Hailing from New York City, Mr. Mr. Adam Shaham graduated with a Bachelor in Science in International Culture and Politics from Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service in 2022. During his time at Georgetown, Mr. Shaham pursued his combined interests in public service and environmental stewardship in his work inside and outside of the classroom. His self-designed major focused on the intersection of international relations and climate change. Through the four-year Mortara Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Mr. Shaham conducted research on gender, education, and technology policy across the Middle East and was published in the International Journal of Education Development.

Off campus, Mr. Shaham completed internships at the U.S. Department of State and with Nancy Pelosi in the Office of the Speaker of the House. Mr. Shaham’s passion for environmental conservation also led him to volunteer more than 500 hours doing shore bank stabilization, invasive species removal, and fire clearance with AmeriCorps through Conservation Corps Minnesota and Iowa. Mr. Shaham was selected as a National Science Foundation REU intern at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) in Fall of 2021. While at BIOS, Mr. Shaham developed a species distribution model for coral fish species threatened by invasive lionfish utilizing machine learning software. In his free time, Mr. Shaham loves to run, read bad mystery novels, and devour bagels.

Mangroves serve vital ecosystem functions, including shore stabilization and carbon sequestration. In the last decade, there have been hundreds of mangrove restoration programs globally yet most restorations have failed for lack of community buy-in. Through the Maharashtra Mangrove Cell, 120 km2 of Mumbai’s mangrove habitats have been restored. In order for these restorations to succeed long term, Mr. Shaham’s Fulbright-Nehru project will evaluate the socio-ecological role of Mumbai’s mangroves to identify effective community conservation strategies. Through interviews at restoration sites, this project aims to gauge community perceptions of mangrove forests. Utilizing Maharashtra State Archive records, this project aims to study historic perceptions of Mumbai’s mangroves.

Abiola Makinde

Ms. Abiola Makinde is a Nigerian-American woman from Lagos and South Florida. As a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design, she completed a senior thesis centered around Sickle Cell and Pain Management. As an Emergency Design Council Fellow she collaborated with designers from the IDC School of Design and the National Institute of Design in researching and designing solutions to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of children in India. Ms. Makinde has also served as a Design Educator for high school students in an after-school program, which focused on the fundamentals and importance of collaborating in the design thinking process.

Ms. Makinde’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining research design solutions to extend culturally relevant and adaptable hospital and home tools and services for Indian children with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and their caretakers past the hospital and into their homes before and after visits. With the support of Prof. Ravi Poovaiah of The Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay and Dr. Yazdi Italia of the Shirin and Jamshed Guzder Regional Blood Centre, her intention is to understand the patient’s journey and challenge points to find ways, through the lens of design, to positively affect the overall experience of the patient and the caregiver.

Meher Kaur

Ms. Meher Kaur is a graduate from the University of Richmond, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Global Studies with a concentration in Development Studies. During her time at the University of Richmond, Ms. Kaur’s studies and research focused in the areas of labor studies, gender studies, and economic empowerment in India. She wrote an Honors Economics Thesis on India’s biometric ID system – Aadhaar, and its ability to facilitate access to public welfare schemes and private services for India’s vulnerable population groups. She also wrote a senior thesis on the city of Gurgaon, India and how its social and urban development was impacted by India’s transition to a neoliberal state and economy. During her time at university, Ms. Kaur also lived in rural Odisha, India, for three months while working with the Indian NGO Gram Vikas to provide water and sanitation services to tribal populations in remote areas. She further studied abroad in Buenos Aires, Barcelona, and Cape Town as part of a multidisciplinary urban studies and economic development study program. Following graduation, Ms. Kaur worked with J-PAL South Asia as a Field Research Associate for a project based out of Punjab, India, where she studied drug use among Punjabi youth and developed and tested the effectiveness of a media awareness campaign. During this time, she realized her interest in the field of public health.

Ms. Kaur is interested in studying and building solutions to address gaps in India’s healthcare delivery systems, with a focus on women and disadvantaged population groups. She is passionate about community-driven research and hopes to grow her skillset through field research and networking with organizations in India’s social sector.

Maternal and reproductive health refers to the health of women before, during, and after pregnancy and the capability to make decisions to reproduce. Studies on Indian migration reveal that urban migrants often lack basic healthcare services, and emerging research in the era of COVID-19 shows that new barriers to healthcare access have formed. Ms. Kaur aims to use a mixed-methods and community-driven approach to bring the perspectives of underrepresented groups such as migrant women to the context of existing policies that cater to urban migrants’ health needs.