Host Institution India: Houston Methodist Hospital

Digvijay Singh Negi

Prof. Digvijay S Negi is an A ssistant P rofessor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai, Maharashtra. Before joining IGIDR, he was a postdoctoral F ellow at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, New Delhi. Prof. Negi obtained his Ph D in E conomics from the Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi, and a Master’s in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi.

His introduction to academic research happened at the ICAR-National Institute of Agricultural Economics and Policy Research as a research associate. Ever since then, he has been interested in seeking solutions to multiple policy challenges faced by Indian agriculture. His primary research areas are agricultural economics, international trade, risk and insurance, and development economics. More recently, pushed by student collaborators at IGIDR, he has started venturing into other related areas of research which include health and nutrition and issues in cultural norms and gender.

Prof. Negi has published several research articles in reputed national and international journals. He also won a graduate student travel grant from the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) to attend the annual AAEA (2018) conference in Washington DC; and travel support from the International Association of Agricultural Economics to attend the 30th International Conference of Agricultural Economists (2018), Vancouver, Canada.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, he plans to study the viability and applicability of satellite imagery and remotely sensed data in designing index-based crop insurance contracts suitable for Indian farmers.

Shiju Sam Varughese

Dr. Shiju Sam Varughese is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy (CSSTIP) in the School of Social Sciences of Central University of Gujarat (CUG), Gandhinagar. After receiving basic training in biology, he completed his M.Phil research on People’s Science Movements (PSMs) and doctoral research on public controversies over science in media from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. Dr. Varughese works on issues related to science and democracy by employing concepts and tools from History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. He has authored Contested Knowledge: Science, Media, and Democracy in Kerala (Oxford University Press, 2017) and co-edited Kerala Modernity: Ideas, Spaces and Practices in Transition (Orient Blackswan, 2015). His current research interests include public engagement with science and technology, risk governance, new social movements, social history of knowledge, science and technology in popular culture, and regional modernities.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Research Fellowship, Dr. Varughese will theorise how the post-disaster societies develop new practices of care to reconstruct their life in the context of the pesticide disaster caused by the aerial spraying of Endosulfan in the cashew plantations in Kasaragod district of Kerala. He will argue that the practices of the community in the post-disaster reconstructive phase will be helpful in developing a new participatory model of risk governance to survive recurrent disasters.

Rajesh Nachiappa Ganesh

Dr. Rajesh Nachiappa Ganesh is a Professor in the Department of Pathology at Jawaharlal Institute of Postgraduate Medical Education and Research (JIPMER), Puducherry. He works in the broad field of Surgical Pathology with special focus on Renal and transplant pathology, molecular pathology and image analysis. He has been actively working in the field of biomarker research in native and transplant renal diseases.

Professor Rajesh has 17 years of teaching and research experience in the field of surgical pathology after his doctoral degree and has been a faculty at JIPMER for twelve years. He had started the division of renal and transplant pathology services at JIPMER in 2010 and started post-doctoral fellowship in Nephro-pathology. He is actively involved in obtaining extra-mural funded research grants from various national and international agencies and has established a molecular research laboratory which has been expanded for diagnostic patient care with funding from Department of Health Research, India. He is also actively involved in proteomics applications and image analysis in the field of Pathology with several collaborative projects.

Professor Rajesh’s Fulbright project is intended on close interaction with senior consultants in Nephropathology at Houston Methodist Hospital, Texas, to study inter-observer reproducibility in diagnostic reporting of renal biopsies and validate the findings in Polyomavirus infections in transplant biopsies. The teaching component involves regular discussion of the biopsy and clinical findings with Nephrology residents and fellows at the center and is in synergy with the research objective to improve patient care outcomes.