Host Institution USA: Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Lainie Beauchemin

Lainie Beauchemin earned a BS in biological engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she researched the molecular underpinnings of schizophrenia and other neurological diseases through the Broad Institute. During her time at MIT, Lainie was co-president of a math mentorship program for underserved middle school girls in the Cambridge/Boston area, and worked in various roles for The Educational Justice Institute, including teaching Python to incarcerated women. She was also chair of the MIT Shakespeare ensemble as well as an actress, producer, and designer for multiple productions. Since her graduation, Lainie has been researching chronic lung diseases. She plans to pursue a PhD in biomedical engineering and hopes to work on expanding healthcare access globally.

Lainie’s Fulbright-Nehru project is focusing on broadening neurological diagnostic care in rural India, in conjunction with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi and Project Prakash. She is assessing the need and feasibility of a system of mental and neurological health clinics in rural India in order to pave the way for more accessible healthcare in these specialties. She is also working with her collaborators to enable the establishment of clinics which are local and accessible to villagers in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At these clinics, patients would receive screening for neurological illnesses, their data could be sent to providers in New Delhi, and prescription medicine could be sent back to the clinics, all at no cost to the villagers. Before such a system can be devised, there is a wealth of preliminary feasibility research to be conducted concerning the areas of need, the obstacles facing the villagers, the regulatory logistics of dispensing prescription medication and treatment, and the sourcing of medical equipment and personnel.

John Portz

Prof. John Portz is a professor of political science at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. His research interests include education policy, federalism, and institutional leadership, and his teaching areas cover urban politics, intergovernmental relations, public policy, and public administration. In one major research project, he joined a team of scholars analyzing the development of civic capacity in support of public education in major U.S. cities. Based on this project, he co-authored City Schools and City Politics: Institutions and Leadership in Pittsburgh, Boston, and St. Louis (University Press of Kansas, 1999). Focusing on leadership, in another co-authored project he worked with a colleague to identify and explore six common practices of leader-managers in the public sector (Leader-Managers in the Public Sector: Managing for Results, M. E. Sharpe, 2010). More recently, he has focused on educational governance and accountability in K-12 education. Of particular interest are variations in how accountability is achieved, depending upon the institutional setting: administrative, market, professional, and political. Each setting offers a different accountability design. In addition, these designs vary across American federalism based upon different perspectives or lenses at the national, state, and local levels. This project led to a recent publication of his, Educational Accountability and American Federalism: Moving Beyond a Test-Based Approach (Routledge, 2023). In addition to his research activities, Prof. Portz has served at Northeastern University as chair of the Political Science Department and director of the University Honors Program. Outside of academia, he has served as an elected member of his home community’s school board and city council.

In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Prof. Portz is combining teaching, advising, and research. This includes giving guest lectures on special topics in American politics and policymaking, providing guest presentations in classes, and advising students on research projects. The political and policy dynamics of federalism in the U.S. and India is of particular interest. The research component of his project is an extension of his recent work on educational accountability, focusing on the dynamics of accountability at the elementary and secondary education levels (up to age 18) in India in comparison to the U.S.

Mohnish Judge

Mohnish Judge is a Tibetan Indian American graduate of Oregon State University with a major in economics and minors in religious studies and linguistics. He is interested in the intersections of language, cultural identity, and political advocacy. As an undergraduate, he conducted research on Tibetan honorifics as part of his honors thesis, founded and led the Himalayan Student Association on his campus, and worked to provide low-income housing in his community.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Mohnish is investigating the mechanisms through which media functions, connects, and interacts with the Tibetan diaspora communities. Using a linguistic and communicative lens, he is examining the production and consumption of the media created by the Tibetan government-in-exile by conducting interviews and surveys, and through discursive and rhetorical analyses. The aim is to contribute to the current scholarship surrounding media, diaspora studies, imperialism, and cultural preservation.

Joseph Edmundson

Joseph Edmundson graduated from the Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service in May 2022 with a BS in international economics with minors in mathematics and international development. His academic interests include rural and agrarian economic development with a focus on environmental, health, and economic externalities. Joseph’s first exposure to India was in December 2019 when he traveled to New Delhi on a two-week immersion trip to collect local experiences and perspectives on water utilization. Leaving the country with a profound desire to continue engaging with and working in India, he spent the remainder of his undergraduate years investigating rural Indian economic initiatives. This culminated in his honors thesis on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act’s theoretical impact on wage dynamics.

During his undergraduate years, he was also involved with nonprofit consulting. Following his graduation, Joseph spent two years with Goldman Sachs Public Global Banking and Markets Division in New York City.

In India, Joseph is excited to spend his free time continuing to develop his yoga practice as well as learn new culinary techniques, two of his favorite hobbies. Joseph also enjoys playing the tenor saxophone and piano, and is an avid art museum goer. Besides, he has performed as a dancer in Georgetown’s Rangila, an annual South Asian dance recital fundraiser.

In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Joseph is researching the implementation of two technology-based agrarian market interventions, the National Agriculture Market (eNAM) and AgMarknet; eNAM is a pan-India online trading platform for agricultural commodities with the goal of enabling large-scale market integration, while AgMarknet is an initiative to collect, analyze, and disseminate market information to agricultural market stakeholders. In his project, specifically, he is examining where these interventions have been successful and the kind of barriers they had faced; he is also studying the initiatives’ market efficiencies; besides, he is looking at the environmental and economic externalities brought about by these initiatives, including in terms of decision-making related to cropping practices and patterns over time.