Host Institution India: University of Illinois

Abhishesh Pal

Mr. Abhishesh Pal is a Ph.D. scholar at the MEMS, Mechatronics, and Nanoelectronics Lab (MMNE), BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, Hyderabad. Mr. Pal intends to work on point-of-care devices by miniaturization of sensors for its application to detect and monitor soil and environmental parameters. This can facilitate deeper penetration of modern technology at a lower cost of utilization.

Mr. Pal earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, (AKTU), and a master’s degree in Nanotechnology from Karnataka’s National Institute of Technology, Surathkal (NITK). During his master’s degree, he utilized marine resources such as shells and bones of marine organisms to work on a patented process for dramatically lowering the sintering temperature of porous ceramic, which can be employed in biomedical applications such as bone scaffolds. He did an extensive study on the effects of combustible pore formers on biocompatible ceramics and optimized various parameters to develop porous scaffolds with required mechanical properties. During his master’s and ongoing doctoral degree, he published research articles in multiple peer-reviewed journals. Additionally, he filed a patent for a device that uses the colorimetric approach to detect and monitor soil macronutrients.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, he will enhance the miniaturized device developed by him to detect soil macronutrients and facilitate data monitoring as well by using machine learning approach such that various soil types can be covered. He wishes to develop a simple and low-cost device to bridge the gap between technology and the farming community in the world.

Having stayed in various parts of India he has developed a keen interest in Indian culture and understands six Indian languages. Also, he is a sports enthusiast and likes to spend his free time cooking and watching movies.

Chandan Kumar

Dr. Chandan Kumar is Assistant Professor at the Department of English and Cultural Studies, Christ (Deemed to be University), Bengaluru, Karnataka. At the department, he has designed and taught several linguistics courses and establishing the linguistics club ‘Taabiir’. Dr. Kumar completed his Ph.D. in linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 2020. His doctoral research delved into the morpho-syntactic and semantic aspects of the nominals in underrepresented languages of Bihar in India. Employing a typological approach, his study prioritized functionality while utilizing generative framework to elucidate structural phenomena across languages.

Dr. Kumar has presented and published articles in prestigious national and international conferences and journals. His research interests lie at the intersection of linguistic structure, society, and meta-structure. His recent publication examines the articulated NP/DP structure, specifically focusing on the challenges of definiteness and referentiality in the Magahi language. In 2020, he was awarded an honorarium of USD 1000 for a paper published by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Seoul and World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., Singapore.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Dr. Kumar’s approach to teaching Hindi at the University of Illinois, Chicago revolves around fostering an intercultural learning experience. He strives to create a dynamic classroom environment that encourages students to explore and appreciate the diversity of languages and cultures, while also strengthening their linguistic skills. Dr. Kumar strives to promote multilingual competencies and an open exchange of ideas and practices amongst his students in an inclusive and dynamic classroom.

Fathima Rayammarakkar Fasal

Ms. Fathima Rayammarakkar Fasal is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. Her doctoral research focuses on urban spaces, migrant communities, and land transformation in Bengaluru. She is researching urban local markets to understand how ethno-religious migrant communities co-produce spaces significant for local businesses in the city and negotiate with the dynamics of land transformation politics. Ms. Fasal has presented her research at various international conferences, including a presentation on urban aestheticization politics and land claims of a fishing community in Chennai at the European Sociological Association’s Urban Sociology Conference in Berlin and another on “Southern Urbanism as a Non-western Methodology for Urban Research” at the Ireland-India Institute’s South Asia conference.

Ms. Fasal has an interdisciplinary background with an M.A. in women’s studies and B.A. in social sciences from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and Hyderabad respectively. This interdisciplinary training reflects the choice and methodology of her ongoing research, which combines concepts from multiple disciplines such as sociology, urban studies, human geography and social history. Ms. Fasal has obtained Junior Research Fellowship (2018) in women’s studies and cleared UGC NET (2022) in sociology. She also worked as a research assistant on a UNICEF project at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Besides academics, Ms. Fasal enjoys cooking, cinema and traveling.

During her Fulbright Nehru Doctoral Research fellowship, Ms. Fasal is striving to valorize the heterogeneity of experiences and knowledge about Global South cities and is conducting comparative research on migrant economies and urbanisms.

Ruchi Rana

Ruchi Rana is a PhD candidate at the Department of MIL & LS, University of Delhi, Delhi. She recently defended her doctoral thesis, which examines nature and ecological ethos in Uttarakhand’s folklife. She holds a master’s in English literature and an MPhil in comparative Indian literature from the University of Delhi. She has worked as a research coordinator for a project on Kazi Nazrul Islam jointly undertaken by the MIL Department (DU) and Kazi Nazrul University, West Bengal. Her research areas include folkloristics, Himalayan culture, diasporic literature, and memory studies.

Ruchi received two academic excellence awards in BA English (Honours) from Swami Shraddhanand College (DU). She is a recipient of a research fellowship for the National Mission on Cultural Mapping (NMCM) of Indian villages, a project under the Ministry of Culture, the Government of India.

Ruchi has presented papers at several national and international conferences, including the 134th annual meeting of the American Folklore Society (2022), the 14th conference of SIEF (2022), the annual conference of the Folklore Society of London (2022), and 10th International Conference of Young Folklorists (2021), organised by University of Tartu, Estonia. Her research on Uttarakhand’s Jagar ritual got published in the UGC Care-listed journal The Eastern Anthropologist in 2022.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant at the University of Illinois in Chicago, Ruchi aims to fortify the bonds between India and the U.S. by promoting intercultural dialogue through Hindi language instruction. Her objectives are to broaden her teaching philosophy, develop innovative pedagogies, and foster a multicultural mindset among her students.

Souvik Chakraborty

Dr. Souvik Chakraborty is assistant professor at the Applied Mechanics Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He also holds a joint faculty position at the Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence. His research interest is at the intersection of scientific computing and machine learning, with a focus on developing scalable, interpretable, and trustworthy machine learning algorithms for solving scientific and engineering problems. He is a recipient of the prestigious INAE Young Engineers Award.

Dr. Chakraborty joined IIT Delhi in 2020. Prior to that, he spent two years at the University of Notre Dame. He also spent some time at the University of British Columbia as a postdoctoral researcher. He obtained his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) fellowship, Dr. Chakraborty will do a combination of both research with teaching. He is developing novel algorithms and frameworks for seamless fusion of data and physics. It is expected that the developed algorithm will address challenges such as out-of-distribution generalization and interpretability and will be a step towards realizing the dream of digital twins for infrastructural systems. Dr. Chakraborty is also teaching a course on operator learning, with the goal of developing synergy between teaching and research.