Indian Institute of Technology Madras Archives

Ethan Chiu

Ethan Chiu is a BA/MPP candidate at Yale University studying history and global affairs, with a focus on semiconductor supply chains, democratic institutions, and national security. His senior thesis, “Human Circuits in Cold War Taiwan”, draws on fieldwork across eight major chip hubs and examines the migrant workers who sustain the global semiconductor industry. After his Fulbright-Nehru grant, he will return to Yale to complete his master’s in public policy thesis, which will integrate his India research with comparative findings from his prior fieldwork in Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, Arizona, and Texas.

At Yale, Ethan founded the Foreign Policy Initiative to connect underrepresented students with national security projects, co-organized the Geopolitics of Technology Forum, and manages research on China and Taiwan at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has worked on emerging technology policy at the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. His professional experience also spans RAND, the Center for a New American Security, the Brookings Institution, and the Pentagon. Ethan has coauthored reports on AI and international security, and contributed to policy memos on supply chain security. He was also a Regeneron Science Talent Search finalist for his biomedical research.

Shaped by his Taiwanese immigrant parents and a near-fatal accident, Ethan aims to build industrial and security policies that protect both democratic institutions and the workers who sustain them. He is originally from Jericho, New York, and outside of work enjoys running, managing his residential college gym, playing the saxophone, and cooking Taiwanese food with friends.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Ethan is studying the labor conditions in India’s fast-growing semiconductor assembly, testing, and packaging ecosystem. Working with Prof. Binitha Thampi at IIT Madras, he is examining how subcontracting chains, recruitment practices, dormitory housing, and occupational safety standards shape worker well-being. Building on his prior fieldwork across ten chip hubs spanning Asia, Europe, and the United States, he is applying a mixed-methods approach combining semi-structured interviews, ethnographic observation, and quantitative analysis. He will be integrating his findings into his Yale master’s thesis to inform American and Indian policy on dignified advanced manufacturing.

Sashi Satpathy

Prof. Sashi Satpathy obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1982, his MSc from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1977, and his BSc from Utkal University, India. After several years of postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute, Stuttgart, and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, California, he joined the physics department at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1987 as an assistant professor, where he is currently a curators’ distinguished professor of physics. Prof. Satpathy’s research area is theoretical condensed matter physics. He has over 150 publications in scientific journals and has mentored about 20 doctoral and postdoctoral scholars over his career. Well known for a number of seminal contributions to the electronic structure theory of solids as well as to the photonic band structure, Prof. Satpathy uses both numerical and analytical tools to study contemporary problems in condensed matter physics. Recent examples are strong spin-orbit coupled systems, orbital Hall and spin Hall effects, and the physics of the skyrmions. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Physics, London.

Carrying information using spin and orbital transport, as opposed to the standard charge transport, is an emerging area of research in condensed matter physics, which has the potential to revolutionize future electronics. Prof. Satpathy’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing a fundamental understanding about orbital transport, specifically about the orbital Hall effect, which involves transport of orbital moments. Toward this, theoretical models are being developed and the results are being validated through calculations based on the density functional theory.

Nageswari Shanmugalingam

Prof. Nageswari Shanmugalingam is a distinguished research professor (STEMM) in mathematical sciences at the University of Cincinnati, Ohio. She obtained her PhD in mathematics in 1999 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her research forms part of the foundation of the emergent field of analysis in metric measure spaces, and her current research interests include nonlinear potential theory, Dirichlet and Neumann boundary value problems in non-smooth setting, and non-local energies, with applications in geometry and quasi-symmetric mappings in non-smooth spaces, including fractals. She has more than 100 research publications in highly ranked mathematical research journals, and has coauthored a book (Cambridge University Press, 2015) on Newton-Sobolev mappings between metric spaces. She also has an extensive mathematical research network both in the U.S. and abroad. Her current research interests include the exploration of how Gromov hyperbolic geometry impacts the behavior of harmonic functions and how the dissipation of heat behaves.

In addition to conducting research in mathematics, Prof. Shanmugalingam is an educator, teaching courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the University of Cincinnati. She has also supervised the PhD research of six students and is currently supervising the dissertation research of three other students. She has also been a mentor to postdoctoral scholars.

The development of analysis in non-smooth spaces was motivated by the need to understand how quasi-symmetric classes of regular metric measure spaces share analytic behaviors. This development highlighted the crucial role played by geometric objects called “uniform domains”. On the other hand, recent developments in geometric group theory and fractal analysis indicate a need for discrete analogs of uniform domains. Prof. Shanmugalingam’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing such analogs in collaboration with Prof. S. Ponnusamy at IIT Madras. The project is also introducing the field of non-smooth analysis to students by conducting a course on analysis in metric spaces.

Vanessa Botelho

Prof. Vanessa Botelho is an associate professor of broadcast and digital journalism at the City University of New York’s Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She is also the director of the TV news and digital specialization within the master’s in journalism program. Prof. Botelho is a two-time Emmy Award-winning live television news producer. For nearly three decades, she produced hundreds of hours of live breaking news programs for millions of viewers in the largest media market in the United States, New York City. She is also a former executive producer, who helped launch a television news station in Boston, Massachusetts, for NBC. She is a visiting scholar at the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Oxford University’s Wolfson College. Prof. Botelho is also a writing instructor for the Oxford Writing Mentors. She has received the prestigious Tow fellowship to support her historical memoir that blends her Anglo-Indian identity with her experience in the fast-paced world of live television news, as well as her family’s immigration experience leaving Calcutta, India, for Brooklyn, New York, in the late 1970s.

She received her master’s degree in biography and memoir from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and her bachelor’s degree in communication arts and journalism from New York Institute of Technology.

For her Fulbright-Nehru teaching and research project, Prof. Botelho is collaborating with Dr. Avishek Parui and Dr. Merin Simi Raj at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai. She is conducting research for her historical memoir at IIT Madras’ Centre for Memory Studies. Her research is also based in Kolkata, where she was born. Focusing on the Anglo-Indian communities of Chennai and Calcutta, she is exploring the facets of identity and memory in postcolonial India. As part of her project, she is also teaching video journalism to graduate students at IIT Madras, demonstrating to them the importance of ethical journalism and how it is key to telling the stories of the underserved.

Madasamy Arockiasamy

Dr. Madasamy Arockiasamy is a professor of civil, environmental, and geomatics engineering at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and its director of the Center for Infrastructure and Constructed Facilities. He earned his PhD in structural mechanics/engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and both his MSc in structural engineering and BE (Hons.) in civil engineering from the University of Madras. He is a registered professional engineer in several U.S. states and Canada, and is an elected fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

With more than four decades of academic, research, and professional experience, Dr. Arockiasamy has served in leadership and faculty positions at FAU, the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Anna University, and the College of Engineering, Guindy, India. He has also been a research engineer and structural engineering specialist. He has contributed extensively to institutional, national, and international professional activities, including serving as a subject matter expert for the International Electrotechnical Commission.

Dr. Arockiasamy’s research and publications focus on subjects such as structural mechanics, offshore and coastal infrastructure, bridge infrastructure systems, non-contact structural monitoring, and AI applications in civil engineering. He has authored and edited several books and proceedings, and has published extensively in leading engineering journals, including ASCE, Elsevier, and MDPI journals. His recent work includes studies on offshore wind monopile foundations, bridge deterioration modeling, and laser-based infrastructure monitoring.

He has received numerous recognitions, including the John J. Guarrera Engineering Educator of the Year Award and the Distinguished Engineering Educator Award.

Dr. Arockiasamy’s Fulbright-Nehru project is focusing on a combination of teaching and research activities. The teaching activities involve co-teaching, leading, and co-organizing workshops and seminars, curriculum enhancement, graduate student mentoring, and bilateral knowledge exchange at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. The project’s research activities are focusing on the development of a geo-AI dashboard by integrating satellite data, GIS, and AI/ML techniques to address key challenges in hazard prediction (landslides, coastal erosion, and water stress), disaster risk reduction, coastal monitoring, sustainable agriculture, water resource optimization, and blue economy applications.

Carsten A. Ullrich

Dr. Carsten Ullrich is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri. He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics in 1995 from the University of Würzburg, Germany, under the supervision of Professor E.K.U. Gross, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with Professor Walter Kohn (winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). In 2001, he joined the University of Missouri as an assistant professor; in 2007, he received tenure; and in 2013, was promoted to full professor of physics. Dr. Ullrich’s main area of research is in theoretical and computational condensed-matter physics; specifically, he is interested in describing light–matter interactions and magnetic excitations using first-principles quantum mechanical approaches. For this purpose, he develops and uses methodologies based on the density functional theory. He has authored over 120 journal publications and a textbook on time-dependent density functional theory. In 2015, he was named a fellow of the American Physical Society.

Amy Allocco

Prof. Amy Allocco is professor of religious studies and director of the Multifaith Scholars Program at Elon University which she joined in 2009. She is the 2019 recipient of the university’s Ward Family Excellence in Mentoring Award. In 2021, Elon’s College of Arts and Sciences honored her with the Excellence in Scholarship Award, while in 2012, she received the Excellence in Teaching Award. Professor Allocco teaches courses on the religions of South Asia, particularly Hinduism. She earned her PhD from Emory University, MTS from Harvard Divinity School, and BA from Colgate University.

Prof. Allocco is an anthropologist of religion who studies contemporary Hindu ritual and religious practices in Tamil Nadu. Her book project, Living with the Dead in Hindu South India, focuses on ceremonies to honor deceased relatives in which ritual drummers summon the spirit, convince it to possess a human host, and beg it to come home as a permanent family deity. Fellowships from Fulbright-Nehru and the American Institute of Indian Studies supported Professor Allocco’s research for her “domesticating the dead” project, which features in an article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion. Besides her co-edited volume, Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Asian Religion (SUNY Press, 2018, with Brian K. Pennington), she co-edited a 2020 issue of the journal Fieldwork in Religion on the theme “Shifting Sites, Shifting Selves: The Intersections of Homes and Fields in the Ethnography of India” (with Jennifer D. Ortegren) and has another co-edited volume under contract with SUNY titled Sweetening and Intensification: Currents Shaping Hindu Practices (with Xenia Zeiler).

Prof. Allocco’s Fulbright-Nehru project is an ethnographic study analyzing the ritual, musical, and storytelling practices of three generations of Tamil Hindu drummer-priests called pampaikkārar to understand a performance tradition in transition. Through eight months of fieldwork in Tamil-speaking South India, she is exploring the creation, transmission, and refashioning of this family’s musical and ritual repertoires, and is examining what these dynamic processes reveal about shifting religious sentiments, aesthetic preferences, and socioeconomic conditions. She is also focusing on the co-constitutive nature of the drummer-priests’ ritual efficacy and musical virtuosity as well as on intergenerational learning and social media experimentation. Her resulting ethnography will delineate how changing religious, narrative, and visual tastes and relationships with technology are reshaping the contours of Tamil devotional performance culture.

Ravindra Duddu

Originally from India, Dr. Ravindra Duddu got his BTech in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Subsequently, he obtained his MS and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University. After that he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics and Columbia University in the City of New York. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University, with secondary appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Dr. Duddu’s research interests and work experience are in the area of computational solid mechanics with an emphasis on fracture mechanics and multi-physics modeling of material damage evolution. His research is interdisciplinary and spans the disciplines of engineering mechanics, earth and environmental sciences, applied mathematics, and scientific computing. Specific application interests include: fracture of glaciers ice and ice shelves, delamination of fiber reinforced composites, and corrosion/fracture of metal alloys. He is an author on 35 peer-reviewed journal articles with more than 1000 citations, and has a h-index of 16. He has generated more than $1.5 million in grants from federal agencies and industry, and has mentored several post doctorate, graduate and undergraduate students in his research group.

Dr. Duddu is a recipient of the US National Science Foundation CAREER award and the Royal Society International Exchanges travel award. He also received the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellowship at Vanderbilt University and the US Office of Naval Research Summer Faculty Fellowship. He is a member of ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute, American Geophysical Union, and United States Association for Computational Mechanics.

The goal of Dr. Duddu’s Fulbright-Kalam project is to expand and strengthen collaborations between his research group at Vanderbilt University and the faculty and students of the Center of Excellence (CoE) on Subsurface Mechanics at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM). The project’s research aim is to develop state-of-the-art computationally efficient schemes for solving fracture mechanics problems encountered in Earth, Environmental and Energy Sciences, through a combination of teaching (seminars and short-courses) and research activities (involving PhD students) at the CoE. These schemes will be tailored to study the plausible mechanisms triggering ice-rock avalanches and identify the vulnerabilities of Himalayan glaciers.

Karun Salvady

Mr. Karun Salvady is a distinction graduate in Neuroscience from the University of Texas at Austin. He has an extensive research background in translational medicine, drug delivery and pharmaceutics and has worked at some of the premier medical institutes in the U.S. including the Baylor College of Medicine, Dell Medical School, National Institutes of Health and UT Austin College of Natural Sciences during his undergraduate tenure. He has delivered award winning presentations across the world at decorated institutions such as Harvard University, The University of Texas at Austin, Butler University, Qatar University, The National Institutes of Health, The National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences and the National Conference on Medicine and Religion. He is also a published scientific author in the field of translational medicine.

Aside from his academic and professional achievements, Mr. Salvady is also a reputed South Indian classical (Carnatic) percussionist, an exponent of the mridangam, and has performed in over 500+ concerts with many of India’s leading musicians across the U.S., U.K. and India. Some of the noted musicians he has accompanied in the field of Indian classical music include Ganesh Rajagopalan (of Ganesh-Kumaresh fame), Flute Raman, AS Murali and Madurai R. Sundar, to name a few. He has also collaborated with musicians from genres such as Western classical, jazz, flamenco and pop, conducted workshops and lecture-demonstrations, recorded for albums and currently teaches South Indian percussion to earnest students in the US. He is currently completing a master’s degree at Goldsmiths, University of London in the unique Music, Mind & Brain program focused on music psychology and the cognitive neuroscience of musical behavior, where he is conducting cutting edge research on the intersection of music and the brain. His interests outside of academics and music include traveling, NBA basketball, food and spirituality.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Student, Mr. Salvady will be working on interdisciplinary research with aims to investigate the impact of South Indian Classical percussion listening on mental health outcomes. This project aims to pioneer efforts in developing a novel music listening protocol using South Indian Classical (Carnatic) rhythms to potentially aid mental health outcomes of neuropsychiatric patients. Cognitive deficits and low mood are common amongst patients with Schizophrenia, Parkinson’s Disease and Stroke recovery. Research has shown that music listening interventions can have beneficial effects on outcomes of mental health, especially on mood and cognition. Carnatic music listening interventions have yet to be experimented, with a particular lack of exploration using the rhythmic components of such music. Combining these approaches may open the way for further investigation in this area.