Host Institution India: University of Minnesota

Anilkumar Chandrappa

Dr. Anilkumar Chandrappa is a scientist at the ICAR-National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, who is focused on genetic gains in rice breeding. He graduated from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru. While pursuing his Ph.D., Dr. Chandrappa studied classical genetic studies in chilli, which earned him a university gold medal for outstanding research in 2019. He was a recipient of a national fellowship to support his Ph.D. from the University Grants Commission (UGC), Government of India. His research interests include incorporating novel breeding approaches into traditional breeding methods in order to increase genetic gain in a limited amount of time. He is also interested in understanding the basis of complex traits with quantitative genetic approaches. Currently, he is working on genomics assisted rice breeding for stress resilience and grain traits, which includes utilization of genomic predictions and haplotype-based breeding along with classical breeding approaches.

Dr. Chandrappa’s research during his Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Research fellowship is aimed at investigating the impact of targeted recombinations over random recombinations in maximizing genetic gain in crop improvement. In this project, he is tackling significant corollary queries, including: firstly, how targeted recombinations are superior to modulated recombination frequencies across the genome in maximizing genetic gain; and secondly, how the varied number of chromosomes with targeted recombination impact the genetic gain against altered recombination frequencies across the entire genome.

Sanskriti

Ms. Sanskriti is a Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (SPM) fellow at the Agri-Biotechnology Division of National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), Mohali, Punjab. She is particularly passionate about changing the perspective of the people of our country regarding genetically modified (GM) crops, making them aware about the potential offered by advanced biotechnological tools and how they can help humanity in the future. She is interested in the cutting-edge technology of CRISPR/Cas, especially because of its potential to generate non-transgenic plants with desired mutations much more quickly than any other breeding practice.

Because of this interest, in her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, Sanskriti is experimenting with the potential of sgRNA/Cas ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) to produce precise mutations in protoplasts of major crops and generate whole plants thereof. The plants will be free from any foreign substances because of the short half-life of RNPs, and therefore have a potential for general public acceptance.

Before joining NABI, Sanskriti received both her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Botany from Panjab University, Chandigarh. She received a DST-INSPIRE Scholarship throughout her B.Sc. and M.Sc. programs. She was a gold medallist in her bachelor’s, and ranked 11th in the CSIR-UGC-JRF, 2017. She availed the UGC Junior Research Fellowship till December 2019. From January 2020, she has been working as an Shyama Prasad Mukherjee (SPM) fellow at NABI. Her work has been published in reputed international journals and she has also presented her work in multiple reputed international conferences.

Aashraya Seth

Aashraya Seth is the Founding President of Impact91 NGO, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (https://www.theintelligentindian.org/). An award-winning social innovator and inventor of India’s most affordable sanitary pad vending machine, he has over eight years of experience in advising the British, Indian, and Australian governments, and leading the transformation of education and social systems. He is India’s Climate Ambassador, World Economic Forum Global Shaper, Yenching Global Symposium China Scholar, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Goalkeeper (SDG 5) and Queen’s Commonwealth Trust’s Young Leader. For his work on menstrual and educational rights of tribal and underserved people, he was placed amongst the top 80 social innovators in India, top 50 emerging policy leaders in the world, and honoured at the UK Parliament in 2024.

Apart from his professional accomplishments, Aashraya has professionally played 10m Air-Rifle shooting and writes for The Times of India. He holds a bachelor’s degree in physics and master’s in business administration. He has fellowships from University of Cambridge, University of Chicago, KDI School, and UN.

As a Hubert H. Humphrey fellow at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, Aashraya will focus on public policy analysis and public administration. He aims to study evidence-based policy making to advocate for gender-friendly policies interpreting data that will contribute to menstrual equity and STEM for girls.

Sayari Misra

Sayari Misra is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS), IIT Jammu. She completed her graduation in microbiology from Scottish Church College, Kolkata. After that, she did her post-graduation in social work (MSW) from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Durgapur and was awarded the institute gold medal for her academic performance. She has worked with Dr. S. Y. Quraishi (former Chief Election Commissioner of India) on his book on family planning titled The Population Myth as his research associate. Her research interests include themes of social stratification and inequality, social networks, and access to water and sanitation. Her ongoing doctoral study primarily focuses on mapping the accessibility to water resources and the social network structure of the rural communities of the Indian Sundarbans.

During extensive field visits in various remote locations in West Bengal, Sayari was drawn to the complex problem of climate-induced water-resource stress and associated vulnerabilities in resource-dependent communities like the Sundarbans. One key insight gained from her research is the pivotal role of social networks in influencing the accessibility of resources and mitigating vulnerabilities, especially among marginalized groups. However, the mechanism and importance of these social relationships in the context of water resource stress remain elusive.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, Sayari is aiming to bridge the aforementioned knowledge gap by elucidating the nuanced interplay between social networks and water resource stress, particularly within marginalized communities.

Arka Banerjee

Arka Banerjee is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. Studying Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sample quality by computationally efficient estimation of the asymptotic covariance matrices in the multidimensional MCMC setup is the main focus of his doctoral thesis. He has published in reputed journals and has participated in and presented papers at national and international conferences.

Arka holds a bachelor’s and a master’s in statistics from the University of Calcutta. Before joining IIT Kanpur, he was a data analyst at Infosys Limited for a year where he worked on a financial modeling project that dealt with the prediction of default payments in a banking institution.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Minnesota, Arka is exploring the computationally efficient and optimized procedures in the estimation of asymptotic covariance matrices in MCMC for a better understanding of MCMC sample quality. During his grant period, he will be studying MCMC sample quality in a high dimensional setting. Arka enjoys travelling and cooking different culinary dishes.