Host City USA: Pune

Theresia von Weiss

Theresia von Weiss earned a BA in philosophy and studio art from St. Catherine University in 2023, where they were an Antonian Honors Scholar and graduated summa cum laude. Their academic and creative work centers on community-engaged art, environmental stewardship, philosophy, and cross-cultural collaboration. During their undergraduate studies, they contributed to projects exploring public art, social practice, and institutional history, including a student-led initiative focused on acquiring and exhibiting artwork by BIPOC artists for the university community.

Theresia has worked across nonprofit, educational, and arts organizations in roles emphasizing communication, collaboration, and public engagement. As a communications intern at Mary’s Pence, they supported nonprofit outreach efforts through writing and grant development. They later served as a teaching assistant for the course “Building a Creative Life” at St. Catherine University, where they collaborated on curriculum development and mentored students in realizing creative projects. Theresia’s current interests include philosophy of art, spiritual philosophy, environmental justice, and community-based artistic practice.

Theresia’s Fulbright-Nehru project is connecting the philosophy of art with the philosophy of religion. They are researching and writing about whether spiritual leaders are themselves considered artists. While current philosophical writing on the aesthetics of spiritual experience directly relates to visual arts and the concept of beauty, Theresia’s philosophy sets out the argument that spiritual leaders are artists. Since fundamental questions such as what an artist is and what art is are the most commonly explored concepts in the field of philosophy of art and aesthetics, looking at spiritual experiences as art steers that conversation toward a new and vital direction.

Nikita Muthakana

Nikita Muthakana is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, and a graduate of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where she earned a BS in quantitative biology. During her time at UNC, she became deeply interested in both scientific research and education, interests that continue to shape her academic and professional goals. As an undergraduate researcher, Nikita worked in developmental lung biology, studying the role of extracellular matrix proteins in alveolar development through computational approaches. She presented this work in a proteomics-focused talk at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center. Through these experiences, she has developed a strong appreciation for research and scientific communication.

Outside of research at UNC, Nikita served as an orientation leader for incoming students, coached coed volleyball, and worked as a teaching assistant for calculus, physics, and biology courses. Working closely with students from different backgrounds fueled her passion for teaching and mentorship, thereby strengthening her long-term goal of becoming a professor in higher education. In her free time, Nikita enjoys playing volleyball, making pizza from scratch, and volunteering with a local healthy lifestyle clinic for children. She values all opportunities to form meaningful connections with others.

Nikita’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is investigating apoptosis inhibitor 5 (Api5) as a potential chemoresistance biomarker in Indian patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). She is conducting the project at IISER Pune under the mentorship of Dr. Mayurika Lahiri. The project is analyzing clinical samples to determine whether Api5 overexpression correlates with poor chemotherapy response. By generating one of the first Indian TNBC datasets for Api5, the research aims to support the development of more personalized and genomic-based treatment strategies.

Anya Martin

Anya Martin is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of social science, artificial intelligence, and meteorology. She received her master’s degree in machine learning from UCLA, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in human-centered computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work focuses on infrastructural and human factors in AI/ML applications at a time when AI/ML methods are moving outside of their traditional homes in tech companies. But in this shift and expansion, AI/ML methods are forced to reckon with “alien” infrastructures of data, compute, and trust. This is perhaps most clearly seen with meteorology, where data interoperability is founded on physical law, and where model “trust” is hotly contested given the high-stakes nature of disaster prediction. Anya is studying how these epistemologies of large-scale data interact as it is crucial for understanding where AI/ML methods succeed and fail.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Anya is examining how AI is being used to predict the weather in India. Meteorology is a physics-based “big data” science reliant on massive data and compute infrastructures to effectively model the atmosphere. This project aims to understand how these infrastructures work with the new AI/ML methods developed over the last few years, most notably the 2022–2023 AI weather models developed using (almost exclusively) tech company data and compute infrastructure. Anya’s ethnographic work to capture this crucial phase will not only inform AI transition but also provide a critical case study for the effective use of AIs.

Kalyani Lawrence

Kalyani Lawrence is a 2025 graduate of Tufts University, where she studied biology and environmental studies. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of medicine, public health, environmental justice, ecology, and (de)colonial studies. She is committed to producing culturally sensitive work that directly benefits the communities she engages with.

During her undergraduate years, Kalyani sought avenues to unite her interests in health and medicine with a burgeoning passion for environmental justice. She became involved in local and global environmental health initiatives, leading a Human and Environmental Health team at the Tufts Office of Sustainability and performing research for the NGO 1for3 which contributed to the development of food sovereignty and Well Child Health programs in a West Bank refugee camp.

Kalyani has accumulated over 5,000 hours of clinical experience ranging from emergency medicine in Boston to reconstructive surgery and rural medicine in Maharashtra. Through these stints, she has become intent on bringing an approach to healthcare that is culturally relevant, based on justice, and grounded in systems thinking.

Kalyani’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is focusing on Adivasi subsistence farmers in a drought-prone region of Maharashtra. Recognizing that shifting environmental and sociocultural pressures influence the conditions required to sustain health, and that such changes produce complexities difficult to capture in medicalized frameworks, her work is exploring the ways that this community understands and relates environmental changes to their health and well-being. Her research is following a community-focused approach in an attempt to better represent the nuances of local realities. This project aspires to contribute to the preservation and elevation of local knowledge, support advocacy efforts, and provide context-specific data which can inform action.

Wasa Ball

Wasa Ball graduated from Columbia University with a BA in linguistics and philosophy, and a minor in anthropology. Her research experiences include experimental linguistics fieldwork as an NSF-IRES fellow in Guadeloupe with Dr. Isabelle Barrière, conducting empirical studies on the understudied French-based Creoles, as well as corpora analysis as an NSF-REU research assistant at the AI4CommSci lab with Dr. Joshua Hartshorne, documenting the endangered languages of Taiwan. Other work experience includes two semesters as a teaching assistant. Her interests lie in the interdisciplinary investigation of language, wherein she traces the global grammatical traditions of linguistics and philosophy to diversify and deepen cross-cultural and cross-historical understanding about the field.

Wasa’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is honing in on the legacy of Sanskrit as a language central to the development of linguistics as a field of study, particularly through vyakarana, or grammatical study in ancient India. She is working primarily with the texts of key grammarians like Panini, Yaska, and Bhartrhari to track the history of linguistic analysis across phonology, morphology, syntax, historical linguistics, and the philosophy of language in the early explorations of human language surfacing in Vedic scholarship and in the traditions of methodological linguistic exploration. Based in Pune, Maharashtra, at Deccan College’s Department of Sanskrit, the project, through literary analysis and synthesis of original Sanskrit sources, is tracing the contributions of Sanskrit linguistics to shed light on its cross-historical and cross-cultural impacts. The project is also seeking innovative ways to apply ancient knowledge to today’s global issues in theoretical linguistics.

David Efurd

Dr. David Efurd is associate professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Wofford College where he also serves as coordinator of Asian studies and co-coordinator of Ancient World studies. He teaches various courses about global artistic traditions which contribute to Wofford’s curricula in Asian studies, Chinese studies, and Middle Eastern and North African studies. He received his PhD in history of art (South Asia) from Ohio State University and his MA in art history from the University of Georgia. Dr. Efurd has also a BFA in painting and drawing from Cornell University where he began pursuing his lifelong interest in darkroom and digital photography.

With South Asia as his research field, Dr. Efurd studies early Buddhist monasteries carved directly into the stone cliffs of western India. His research encompasses interactions among peoples in the ancient western Deccan and the resulting artistic and architectural forms hewn from living rock. His present work focuses on revisiting scholarship from the era of the British Empire to later studies of Buddhist monuments. He utilizes both meticulous examination of archaeological sites and his training in the arts to foster understanding about ancient and contemporary artistic practices throughout Asia. Dr. Efurd’s other scholarly interests include digital humanities and the preservation of cultural heritage sites. He maintains an archive of photographs of caves, architecture, and Buddhist art, which is accessible to scholars all over the world.

Dr. Efurd’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining holistic design in early Buddhist architecture through data collection via photographic documentation and intensive study of an ancient monastic cave complex in western India. The project aims to offer insights into little-known architectural practices of 2000 years ago, which reflect in the extent and scope of holistic unity attempted by the cave’s creators.

Sunila Kale

Prof. Sunila S. Kale is associate professor of international studies at the University of Washington. Her research and teaching focus on Indian and South Asian politics, energy studies, the political economy of development, and the history of capitalism. She is the author of Electrifying India (Stanford, 2014), Mapping Power (OUP, 2018), and “Rural Land Dispossession in China and India” (Journal of Peasant Studies, 2020). She completed her BA from the University of Chicago and her PhD from the University of Texas.

In 2020, India’s Railway Ministry announced that the railways would resurrect the practice of selling chai (tea) to its millions of customers the old-fashioned way, in kulhads, the small mud-clay cups that are meant to be used once and discarded. Prof. Kale’s Fulbright research asks whether and how policies such as the kulhad program support and reproduce modes of informal, artisanal work that persist despite developmental ideologies that have long predicted their demise. In her project, she is focusing on small-scale, labor-intensive informal production in urban India by looking at the work of traditional potters, or kumbhars, in western India.

Anita Charles

Dr. Anita Charles is Director of Teacher Education and Senior Lecturer at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. In the past, she has taught a wide variety of ages and abilities, from first graders through adult learners, including more than ten years as a high school English teacher.

Dr. Charles has conducted many workshops on a wide range of topics, including autism, special education, digital literacies, and teaching methodologies.

As a Fulbright Scholar in India in 2016, Dr. Charles taught undergraduates and explored issues of literacy and inclusion in pre-K-12 schools. Subsequently, she engaged in research on inclusive education for children with disabilities in India.

Dr. Charles has a PhD from University of New Hampshire in the area of Adolescent Literacy. Her dissertation on digital, social, and academic literacies won two national awards. She holds an MEd from Harvard and a BA from Dartmouth College. She has published numerous articles as well as several book chapters. In 2019, she also appeared on a nationally televised ABC news special with Diane Sawyer entitled “Screentime.”

For her Fulbright-Nehru grant, Dr. Charles plans to present on topics related to teacher education, literacy, inclusion and diversity, and/or similar areas of expertise. Her philosophy is based in progressive theory, which promotes a student’s learning process as one of teacher-student interaction, discovery, and growth, through a recognition of social and cultural contexts. In India, a number of initiatives strive to improve educational opportunities, processes, and outcomes for all children. In addition to teaching, she hopes to assist a host institution in curriculum/program development, participate in meetings as an active member of the organization, engage in local community outreach, and give presentations or workshops.

Siddhi Deshpande

Ms. Siddhi Deshpande is a graduate of The Pennsylvania State University Schreyer Honors College, where she majored in Neurobiology with minors in Global Health and World Literature. In her time at Penn State, she pursued a variety of interests in public health and medicine. She completed an honors thesis in the Water, Health, and Nutrition lab, titled “Examining Water Insecurity as a Driver of Nutrition Transition Among Tsimane’ Adults in Lowland Bolivia”. Through this thesis, she found that water insecurity was associated with increased consumption of sugary beverages among Tsimane’ in Amazonion Bolivia. Furthermore, the level of market integration also played a role in probability of sugary beverage consumption. Her research in water insecurity, nutrition, and health in a global health setting sparked her interest in conducting similar research in India, which is the reason she applied to the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship! Besides her research, Ms. Deshpande also took a broader interest in environmental health. She co-founded and co-led an organization called Sunrise Movement State College, where she worked with her community to organize local climate demonstrations, advocated for climate justice measures, and campaigned for divestment from the fossil fuel industry. She believes that community-wide advocacy and the will to confront the reality of climate change will help achieve climate justice in our communities.

After completion of the Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Deshpande plans to attend medical school and attain a dual MD/MPH degree. In university, Ms. Deshpande worked as an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), where she treated 100+ patients on a 911 ambulance service. Enjoying the work of treating patients but also hoping to serve her community on a larger scale, Ms. Deshpande hopes to combine an education in medicine and public health to serve as a physician who advocates for her community and works towards climate justice. She envisions herself conducting environmental health research and influencing policy alongside her responsibilities in clinical medicine.

In India, growing rates of obesity, insulin resistance and cardiometabolic disease are present alongside malnutrition and hunger across India. Climate change has been understudied in connection to this nutrition transition, despite increased drought across India and a rapid demographic change as a result. Food insecurity is an important mechanism of the consequent public health impacts; Ms. Deshpande plans to investigate how declining agricultural productivity, driven by climate change, causes nutrition transition from undernutrition to obesity among the rural poor. Ms. Deshpande is studying under Dr. Angeline Jeyakumar at Savitraibai Phule Pune University, where she is conducting research in Pune and Latur.

Sharolyn Pollard-Durodola

Dr. Sharolyn Pollard-Durodola is a Professor in the English Language Learning program in the Department of Early Childhood, Multilingual, and Special Education, in the College of Education at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. She received a BA degree in Romance Languages from Mount Holyoke College, a MAT from Columbia-Teachers College, an MS in Developmental and Remedial Reading from City College of New York, and an EdD in Curriculum and Development with an emphasis in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Houston. Her scholarship attends to the language and literacy development of multilingual students. Central to her scholarship is developing school-based interventions, evaluating their impact on the language and conceptual knowledge development of PK-3 multilingual learners and investigating how to improve the quality of language practices that are embedded in subject area instruction (e.g., science, social studies). She has been the co-principal investigator on two IES grants titled Words of Oral Reading and Language Development, focusing on preschool language/literacy development and is the co-principal investigator for Project E3: Enhancing, Engaging, and Empowering Teachers for the Next Generation of English Learners funded by The Office of English Language Acquisition (OLEA), National Professional Development Program. She was also the Senior Researcher (Nevada) for the multi-site Project International Consortium for Multilingual Excellence in Education (ICMEE), also a National Professional Development Grant funded by OELA. These OELA grants focus on supporting general education teachers of multilingual learners via professional development approaches (e.g., eLearning, Saturday Advanced Professional Learning Institutes, My Teaching Partner coaching) with attention to the influence of teacher beliefs and attitudes on their instructional practices. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Early Education and Development, Early Childhood Research Quarterly, The Elementary School Journal, Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools, The Reading Teacher, and Bilingual Research Journal.

In 2019, Dr. Pollard-Durodola traveled through India, noting its multilingual presence, which inspired her to consider how Indian teachers are able to promote multilingual learning during the early primary school years in a country where many languages, mother tongues, and dialects are spoken. She investigates how beliefs (teachers, school administrators, parents) about multilingualism (e.g., learning English, Hindi, Mother Tongue) may influence the implementation of India’s Three Language Model priorities and how the history of India’s language education policies may provide insights about current tensions. This Fulbright-Nehru projects seeks to provide insights about the factors that contribute to or hinder early childhood multilingualism in similar global settings where immigration patterns challenge educational systems to promote linguistic equity.