Indian Fellows 2022-2023 Archives

Ananya Sinha

Ananya Sinha is an officer of the Indian Revenue Service. She has over five years of experience in direct tax administration, during which she has conducted tax assessments of over 300 tax entities ranging from high-net-worth individuals to multinational companies and NGOs. She has conducted tax outreach programs in her assigned jurisdiction and has also been part of tax enforcement operations. She has been responsible for the revenue administration of one of India’s oldest and largest business districts, Chandni Chowk – known for its bazaars for the last 500 years. She has also garnered field-level experience of the implementation of historic direct tax policy measures like Operation Clean Money launched after the announcement of demonetization in November, 2016.

In her current role as Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax, Ms Sinha is part of the team that is responsible for policy formulation with respect to the newly launched Faceless Appeal Scheme, 2021. The scheme is a, one of its kind, global initiative designed with the objective to make tax administration more efficient, transparent, and accountable through the use of technology. Ms Sinha provides policy inputs in respect of this scheme to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT)- the apex direct tax body in India.

She is an Economics Graduate and holds a Bachelor in Law from the University of Delhi. She also has a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Law from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru.

As a Humphrey fellow, she wishes to pursue interdisciplinary engagement aiming to understand and study the organization and taxation of the real estate sector. She wishes to enrich her insights through a cross-country comparison of the taxation of the real estate sector in other developing countries. She hopes that these insights gathered during the course of the fellowship will help her in contributing to the development of a more nuanced policy that can have a significant impact in increasing the revenue generated from the real estate sector.

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.

Anchal Sharma

Ms. Anchal Sharma is a Ph.D. candidate at IIT Delhi. Her research encompasses tactile perception of objects in the visually challenged. Drawn towards innovations exercising imagination, scientific thinking, and strong user empathy, she has mentored and participated in diverse social innovation projects and won two awards by IISc, Bangalore and IIT-Delhi with her team. She has led and been a speaker in events propagating innovation including those by AIM, NITI AYOG.

She completed her M.Des. in Industrial design (from SPA, New Delhi) and interned at GVIC, PepsiCo, India. She was acknowledged for her thesis work for integrating cultural spatial forms in a unique product using principles of light and shadows to educate children about unity. The project was sponsored by the Design Clinic Scheme by GoI and NID and was featured as a finalist in Toycathon 2021 and TISDC 2018. During her B.Arch. she emerged as a 2nd ranker both for her thesis work on ‘a school for experiential learning’ and overall 5-year academic performance.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, she will analyse how to better convey three-dimensionality in two-dimensional tactile stimuli. Although layered and complex, she believes with continual deep-work and problem-solving acumen, this work can profoundly advance and contribute towards accessible STEM education for those without vision.

She believes in a multi-faceted growth and commends the perseverance sports can bring to life. She has played Throwball at National level and won silver medal (Badminton) at college level. Being perceptive towards life, she exercises self-expression through art, writing, and short videos.

Ajay Salunkhe

Mr. Ajay Salunkhe is a doctoral student in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati. His doctoral research is located in the intertwined histories of photography, archaeology, and museum movement. His doctoral dissertation titled, Framing the Nation: How Museums Tell Stories of India Through Photographs, enquires into the shifting and layered relationship between museums and photographs in post-independent India. He is interested in the potential of photographs to communicate ideas and establish power relations by telling (or not telling) the story of India through her museums, as well as the dynamics of the interactions between visitors and photographs in museum space.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, his research aims to probe the institutional use of photography in the museum and curatorial practices, both in India and abroad, that contributed to the post-colonial Indian imagination, with special reference to the use of photographs in the Festival of India in the US (1985-1986).

He has several years of curatorial, exhibiting, and education experience as part of a museum’s outreach program, which has lent depth and dialogue to his research. He can be found taking long walks at any hour of the day, catching Pokémon, when he is not reading.

Meghna Rohit Amin

Ms. Meghna Rohit Amin is a doctoral candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad. Her doctoral research examines the intergenerational occupational shift among the head-loading Mogaveera women who constitute the matrilineal fishing community of coastal Karnataka in India. Primarily based on fieldwork and ethnographic narratives, the study locates the constant deliberation of the Mogaveera women with fishing which is their caste occupation.

Ms. Amin’s dissertation for her master’s degree in Sociology from the Manipal Centre for Philosophy and Humanities was also on the Mogaveera women. The research study is titled “Putting Food on the Table: A Period Study on the Head Loading Mogaveera Women.” After her graduation, she joined an advocacy group where she worked as a digital campaigner and ran campaigns for the rights of marginalized communities, combating air pollution, and raising awareness about climate change. She also taught English to high school children in Udaipur, managed a restaurant in Manipal, and served as a barista at a cafe in Bengaluru.

She has been selected for the award of ICSSR full-term centrally administered Doctoral Fellowship for 2021-22. As a Fulbright-Nehru recipient, Ms. Amin is keen to collaboratively interpret ethnographic narratives and accounts at the intersectionality of caste, class, and gender in relation to occupational mobility within the discipline of native anthropology.

Zahra Rizvi

Ms. Zahra Rizvi is a Ph.D. Scholar and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Her research area is an intersection of 21st Century popular culture, literature and media of the United States and the Americas, Urban Studies, Utopia/Dystopia Studies, Youth Activism, and Game Studies. Rizvi studies the political ecology of urban dystopias at this intersection to transform academia in its orientation towards ‘future studies’. Rizvi has presented papers at numerous national and international conferences and has publications in various online and print journals.

Rizvi holds a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Delhi, New Delhi, where she graduated as a double gold medallist. She is the founding-member of the Indian chapter of Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). She was the Ministry of Education (MHRD) SPARC Fellow in Digital Humanities at Michigan State University, MI, in 2020. In 2021, she was awarded the Electronic Literature Organization Fellowship to work on media archaeology and e-lit practices in South Asia. In 2022, she was awarded the International Youth Library (IYL) Fellowship to conduct research at IYL, Germany, and access their resources, archives and database, for her research in Children’s and Young Adult literary practices and communities, youth activism, and ethical and transformative digital futurisms.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow at Yale University, Rizvi will further her doctoral research considerations and study urban dystopias, their political ecology, and the global/local/glocal responses to the same in contemporary times, especially from South Asian and East Asian perspectives. The Fulbright-Nehru program enables her to study the planetary flows of being and information that underlie the global dystopian condition in contemporary times and explore and conceptualise ‘better futures’ based on safe and sustainable ethics of care.

Altaf Pasha

Mr. Altaf Pasha is a PhD scholar at the Centre for Nano & Material Sciences (CNMS), Jain University, Bangalore. His research is focused on developing solar photovoltaic materials and devices with a commitment to solve global energy crisis and contribute to India’s renewable energy target. He is working towards making perovskite solar cells a viable technology by focusing on efficiency, stability, and scaling. His research has been published in reputed peer-reviewed international journals and international conference proceedings.

Prior to joining Jain, he received his BSc (Physics) from SSMRV College and MSc (Physics) from National College Jayanagar. After his MSc, he worked as a research scholar at Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (KIT), Germany on a collaborative project with major photovoltaics industry partners. He later joined Photo and Electrocatalysis Research Group at Jain to focus on fabrication of new generation solar cells.

He has also worked as a part-time (four semesters) assistant professor at Department of Postgraduate Studies & Research in Physics at the National College and has guided a few students in projects leading to multiple publications.

In his Fulbright fellowship, Mr. Altaf is studying phase segregation mechanism in mixed halide perovskites, to fabricate photostable tandem solar cells, with a view to futuristic renewable energy technologies.

Mr. Altaf is an avid STEM communicator. He serves as a part-time curator in BV Jagadeesh Science Centre, he has delivered public lectures and moderated debates on important public policies. He is also a Kannada theatre artist and enjoys interconnecting arts with science.

Kadiguang Panmei

Mr. Kadiguang Panmei is a doctoral fellow at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and his research is focussed on the documentation and preservation of Zeliangruang (Zeliangrong) Naga folk music. He holds a master’s degree in Sociology from the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi university, an MPhil in Social Sciences from TISS Mumbai and is also a certified audio engineer and music producer from ILM academy.

As a member of the tribal community of the Ruangmei (Rongmei) Nagas from Manipur in northeast India, his interests in research include the study of tribal culture from its myriad perspectives on food, the arts, geopolitics and more. He is a recipient of the UGC JRF (2016) for conducting his MPhil-Ph.D. research and was awarded the emerging scholar award at the international food studies conference (2019) held in Kaohsiung, Taiwan for the presentation of his MPhil paper. He was also awarded the Sahapedia–UNESCO Fellowship in 2019 to conduct research on the aural history of the Ruangmei Nagas of Manipur.

He believes that research on music should include a union of both the sonorities of music and the lexical narratives behind its histories and philosophies. His Ph.D. research on Zeliangruang Naga folk music therefore considers not only the important need of the written word but also, the preservation of folk songs and music through recordings and audio archiving.

The Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship for him is a crucial step towards not only completing his Ph.D. research but his vision to document and preserve folk music and to facilitate the recovery of dying oral traditions from the northeast region of India. Through his work, he hopes to add more to the growing stock of research on the people of north east India, uncovering the plethora of ethno-cultural knowledge that this remote region of India has to offer. When he is not reading or writing for his research, he likes to cook, produce music and play the guitar.

Shubham Pande

Mr. Shubham Pande is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Electrical Engineering department of Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu. His doctoral research primarily focuses on the characterization and modeling of Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM). He is also interested in electro-thermal analysis, compact modeling of electronic devices, and BiCMOS process development. He is an awardee of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship in 2020.

The proposed work under Fulbright-Nehru grant aims to develop strategies for reducing operating current in RRAM devices. This proposal will attempt to address this challenge by optimizing device structure using Multiphysics simulations, compact modeling, and experimental validation. Successful completion of this work will help set design guidelines and develop a fundamental understanding of the technology.

Apart from research, Shubham’s hobbies include reading, traveling, and watching movies.