Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research Archives

Shreya Suresh

Shreya Suresh graduated summa cum laude from Lafayette College in May 2025 with a BS in neuroscience and a minor in music. During her undergraduate career, she had the incredibly rewarding opportunity to spend a semester abroad in India as part of the School for International Training’s public health, gender, and sexuality program. In India, Shreya conducted an independent study focused on examining youth community mental health initiatives and the democratization of mental well-being in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. In April 2025, she presented the findings of this study at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As an aspiring mental health practitioner, Shreya acknowledges that her Indian heritage will undoubtedly influence her clinical practice, and therefore understands the value of understanding this cultural perspective while contributing to the field of public mental health in India.

Shreya has had a variety of other experiences that have strengthened her passion for public mental health. She built on her background in public health through the Public Health 360 Program run by Global Health and Education Projects. As part of this comprehensive public health training, she attended speaker sessions hosted by public health professionals, practiced her writing and communication skills, and collaborated with a global team to develop and present a grant proposal to combat food insecurity in Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Shreya’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the efficacy and experiences of community mental health workers under a task-sharing model, which involves training community members to provide basic health services within their communities. She is also examining the reciprocal benefits of task sharing for both health workers and their communities by assessing the following: the training received by community mental health workers; mental health care access/utilization in their communities; psychological/social impact on community mental health workers; the relationship between these community providers and formally trained mental health practitioners; and the necessary next steps to further democratize mental well-being.

Siddarth Seenivasa

Siddarth Seenivasa is a clinical research coordinator and biostatistician at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he contributes to neuroimaging and proteomics research focused on eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS). Siddarth’s academic foundation includes a double major in biology (molecular genetics) and mathematics from the University of Rochester. He holds a master’s in biostatistics from Boston University, where he also investigated the intersection of mental health, bullying, and neuroimmune disorders. Siddarth’s research interests encompass psychiatry, neuroimmunology, and computational biology, with a particular focus on immune system dysfunctions in pediatric populations. He has developed statistical models to examine neurobiological differences across patient populations, most recently patenting a model to distinguish between PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections), OCD, and various eating disorders; this model is currently awaiting validation from a larger cohort. Siddarth has authored and co-authored publications on neuroinflammation, including his latest work exploring estrogen’s role in the mesolimbic pathway in women with eating disorders. He has also presented his research at academic conferences, such as at the Digestive Disease Week and to that of the Society of Behavioral Medicine. Siddarth plans to begin his MD-PhD journey upon returning to the U.S., with the goal of further integrating clinical practice and psychiatric research to deepen the understanding about mental health and neuroimmune disorders.

Siddarth’s nine-month Fulbright-Nehru project is seeking to develop a culturally adaptive screening tool for Indian youth to identify PANDAS, a condition for which no such tool currently exists. Toward this, he is working with Dr. Suvarna Jyothi at Sri Ramachandra Medical College, Chennai, and conducting clinical interviews to evaluate the eating habits, medical history, and mental health of at-risk adolescents. The objective is to create a diagnostic tool that incorporates the sociocultural nuances of Indian youth, thereby facilitating early intervention and addressing the underdiagnosis of PANDAS due to limitations of Western diagnostic methods.

Joshua Rosenthal

Dr. Joshua Rosenthal is a senior scientist at the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is an ecologist with a long-standing interest in the integration of public health, environment, and international development. Dr. Rosenthal completed his PhD and postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed an AAAS Science and Diplomacy Fellowship at the NIH, was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has been awarded three NIH Director’s Awards for work across the agency in support of public health and environment. Dr. Rosenthal has developed and led numerous programs at the NIH in environment and health research, as well as in capacity building in low- and middle-income countries, including the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups; the International Training and Research in Environmental and Occupational Health; Ecology of Infectious Diseases; Global Environmental and Occupational Health Research Hubs; the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network; and the Clean Cooking Implementation Science Network. Presently, Dr. Rosenthal co-chairs the NIH Working Group on Climate Change and Health. His current work is substantially focused on climate change and health, and on interventions to reduce exposure to household air pollution. Dr. Rosenthal’s research- and policy-related publications can be found at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=BztHZSIAAAAJ

While the health consequences of climate change are becoming apparent around the world, the relevant agencies are woefully underprepared to address them. From trauma, injury, and deaths resulting from extreme weather events, to increased rates of infectious diseases, chronic respiratory and mental health conditions, the world is facing profound threats to the gains in public health that have been made over the past decades. For his Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, Dr. Rosenthal is working with Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) in Chennai and other Indian institutions to develop a new master’s in public health (MPH) curriculum in the field of climate change and health.

Samhita Vasu

Samhita Vasu graduated from Johns Hopkins Engineering on a Hodson Trust Scholarship with a BS in biomedical engineering in May 2024. She is interested in the use of microphysiological systems, medical device design, data science, and signal processing to help understand, diagnose, and treat life-threatening diseases. At Johns Hopkins, she worked on heart-on-chip assays for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) drug screening, as well as on the use of engineered heart tissues to study mitochondrial dysfunction in DMD; she also studied the neurodevelopmental outcomes of renal anhydramnios fetal therapy. Besides, she worked in Stanford’s Cardiac MRI Research Group to study cardiac MRI texture analysis for better tracking of the disease progression of DMD. As an intern for NASA Ames Research Center, she developed a spaceflight environmental data visualization tool for the Rodent Research missions to the International Space Station. Apart from research, Samhita was involved in the Johns Hopkins’ Biomedical Engineering Design Teams program, through which she designed, built, and validated various medical devices and solutions. One such project involved building a flexible arthroscope to increase visualization to the posterior compartment of the knee. Another project involved building a more precise shave biopsy device to prevent melanoma transection. She also led a team to develop a generative AI, image-based medical information translation solution for patients with low English proficiency. Samhita was the first author of an article titled “Biomaterials-based Approaches for Cardiac Regeneration” and was also awarded the Dr. Stanley Hellerstein Memorial Travel Award.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a debilitating condition that impacts around 140 million people in India. Fifty per cent of patients with CKD in India are first seen by a healthcare professional when their disease has progressed to the extent of kidney failure. Given India’s low physician-to-patient ratio, at-home monitoring can expedite diagnosis and improve treatment. In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Samhita is working with CKD specialists to design and validate a saliva-based creatinine sensor that can measure kidney function at home. The goal is to develop a working device that helps catch CKD symptoms early in at-risk patients.