Host Institution USA: St. John’s Medical College

Sharanya Sriram

Sharanya Sriram graduated with a BS in molecular and cell biology from the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2024. As an undergraduate, she conducted research on the immune environment of pancreatic islets in diet-induced obesity and also completed a senior honors thesis on ribosomal protein differences in alpha and beta cells to investigate stress susceptibility in diabetes pathogenesis. Her global health work includes volunteering with street medicine teams to serve refugee communities in Tijuana, Mexico, and participating in the CATALYST program with the UCSD Bioregional Center, wherein she worked with agricultural leaders, indigenous activists, and policy experts to study how climate-related urban challenges impact community health across the U.S.-Mexico border. Sharanya has also studied in Bali, Indonesia, where she examined how indigenous Balinese healing traditions are integrated with allopathic medicine. Her interests span global perspectives on illness, community-oriented climate justice and resilience, and narrative storytelling.

As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar, Sharanya is conducting a qualitative ethnographic study across diverse clinical sites in Bengaluru, India, to examine how perceptions of social support in diabetes management are shaped by gender roles, rural–urban contexts, and beliefs in Ayurvedic medicine. Her research seeks to enhance cross-cultural understanding of the holistic and psychosocial dimensions of chronic disease care, and inform the development of tools to help healthcare providers assess and integrate social support into individualized treatment plans involving culturally informed medical practices.

Rajat Ramesh

Rajat Ramesh graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in biochemistry and history. Committed to the study of both science and social impact, Rajat has conducted diverse research across biomedical science and public history – from developing chemical tools to study post-translational modifications under Dr. George Burslem to investigating the legacy of redlining and urban renewal with Dr. Brent Cebul. Rajat has led efforts within the Guatemala Health Initiative, supporting clinic operations at Hospitalito Atitlán and conducting field research to inform sustainable health interventions. He has also served as a patient care assistant at the Center for Surgical Health, helping patients access essential surgical services. Besides, he has coordinated STEM outreach through the Netter Center’s Moelis Access Science program. His community engagement includes volunteering with children with cerebral palsy and providing clinical services at a student-run clinic for homeless populations. A recipient of the Martin Wolfe Prize and the College Alumni Society’s undergraduate research grant, Rajat is currently a postbaccalaureate fellow at the NIH Vaccine Research Center, where he investigates HIV persistence under antiretroviral therapy using single-cell sequencing technologies.

Rajat’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating how electronic health record (EHR) systems can improve tuberculosis (TB) reporting in southern India, where communities face significant barriers to care and treatment adherence. The study is assessing the implementation of open-source EHRs in both rural and urban healthcare settings. Through semi-structured interviews with healthcare providers, it is exploring cultural, behavioral, and technical barriers – such as stigma and confidentiality concerns – that affect EHR effectiveness. This mixed-methods research aims to identify scalable solutions to enhance TB surveillance and reporting in resource-constrained regions of India.

Anna Correa

Ms. Anna Correa is a recent graduate of the University of Iowa College of Public Health where she received a Masters of Public Health in Community and Behavioral Health. She previously completed bachelor’s degrees in public health and international relations (transnational issues emphasis) at the University of Iowa. Ms. Correa’s educational background includes work in migration, qualitative research methods, and community-engaged public health. During her time in college, Ms. Correa worked for the University of Iowa Prevention Research Center for Rural Health where she assisted in the implementation of a community-based physical activity program. She is the Principal Investigator for a research study examining the impact of COVID-19 on student resident assistants in university dorms.

Outside of academics, Ms. Correa was deeply involved in her community, serving as the President for Iowa Agni South Asian A Cappella group, Co-Chair of the University Lecture Committee, and member of many additional groups. In 2021, Ms. Correa began studying Hindi through the Critical Language Scholarship and will continue her studies in 2022 with the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship.

Ms. Correa loves people, and she tries to get to know everyone she can. She looks forward to her time in Bangalore and hopes to meet many new friends in her time there.

As Bangalore continues to grow, the migrant population increases but the support for migrant laborer well-being has not kept pace. Ms. Correa, as part of her Fulbright-Nehru project, aims to conduct qualitative research with three unique migrant groups: i) construction workers, ii) artisans, and iii) information technology employees. In doing so, Ms. Correa hopes to better understand the needs of migrant laborers in the city and build relationships between researchers at St. John’s and members of the migrant worker community.

Kathleen O’Reilly

Dr. Kathleen O’Reilly is a professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University and is its presidential impact fellow. She has over 25 years of research experience in gender, and water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions in rural and urban India. She is trained as a feminist geographer, ethnographer, and South Asia scholar. Her qualitative research on gender norms has identified new information regarding the negative influence of these norms on physical, environmental, social, and sexual stressors related to WASH. Over the course of her career, she has sought an in-depth understanding of internal community and household dynamics when it comes to control and access to resources, like time and toilets, for women and the socially marginalized groups. Her research highlights the need to understand the complexities of social relations and sanitation policy as they pertain to spatial patterns of inequality in WASH. Recently, she created and taught short workshops on best practices for research on sensitive topics based on her ethnographic research in India. Her work has been funded by, among others, the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She has also published in such prestigious journals as Geoforum, Health & Place, International Journal of Qualitative Methods, Environment & Urbanization, Water Security, and World Development.

In rural India, where conditions require women’s intensive, unpaid domestic work, it is urgent to study how it reproduces gender inequality; this will also add to the global knowledge on unpaid labor’s gendered impact. Dr. O’Reilly’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating the workloads of unmarried and married rural young women; the latter living in matrilocal or patrilocal households. Despite evidence that access to leisure time contributes to women’s well-being, a large gap remains regarding young women’s leisure activities in rural India. This project is attempting to fill that gap by analyzing the gendered geographies of domestic labor and leisure. It is also making a methodological contribution by recording the work and leisure conditions of populations with low literacy through audio diaries.

Anna Kozan

Anna Kozan is graduating in May 2024 with a BS in nursing and a BA in Spanish language studies from Ramapo College of New Jersey (RCNJ). In her Spanish studies program, she conducted research on the intersection of language and health, and the potentially detrimental outcomes that can occur when patients speak a different language from their care providers. In 2023, she completed a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), Spark, to study Russian. She is now volunteering as a CLS alumni ambassador and advertising the program through social media and by hosting events. She has been working as a patient care technician at a hospital in New Jersey since October 2022 and developing her clinical skills to help her in her career as a nurse. Anna also works as a Spanish tutor at Ramapo College. Besides, she is the social media chair of the RCNJ Spanish Club. She is also a member of the Sigma Theta Tau International Honor Society of Nursing and of the Sigma Delta Pi National Collegiate Hispanic Honor Society. Anna is fluent in Spanish and holds an intermediate mid-proficiency in Russian, as well as a novice high proficiency in Arabic and the American Sign Language. She is also a choreographer and performer for the RCNJ Dance Company.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Anna is researching if language barriers in India’s Karnataka state is affecting patient care, health literacy, and health outcomes. Working with Dr. Archana Siddaiah at St. John’s Medical College in Bengaluru, she is interviewing healthcare workers at the college to determine their experiences with language barriers and patient care. She is also interviewing patients to find out whether they are experiencing problems in care due to language barriers. The goal of the project is to implement community-based solutions for the issues that are identified.