Meet Our India Fulbrighters Archive - Page 17 of 42

Ruheela Sheikh Hassan

Dr. Ruheela Sheikh Hassan is a Senior Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at the Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST), Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir. She is both in charge of the Documentation, Printing and Publication Centre (DPPC) and the Media Advisor and Coordinator for Community Media and Community Outreach. Dr. Hassan has served as the Deputy Director of the Internal Quality Assurance Cell of the IUST. She started the first community newspaper and community radio station in Kashmir and is the founder-editor of the campus newspaper. In her role as a member of the Board of Studies and the Board of Research Studies at IUST, University of Kashmir and Cluster University of Kashmir, she has been involved in drafting the university statutes and curriculum. She regularly contributes Urdu entries to Media Dictionary, an online media literacy initiative. She has more than 20 research publications and she presented in more than 50 national and international conferences. She is associated with the Press Information Bureau, the nodal agency disseminating news from the Government of India to the media and for training journalists. She is also associated with the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT-J&K), an organization dedicated to training teacher educators. She has worked with organizations, such as Eenadu Television (a regional language television channel in Hyderabad), Child Rights and You (CRY), and the Agha Khan Development Network. She has submitted four research projects funded by the Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), National Council for Rural Institutes (NCRI), Jammu and Kashmir Directorate of Information and Public Relations and IUST.

Home Institution: The Islamic University of Science and Technology (IUST) is a state public university established in 2005. The university was ranked in the band “performer” category at the national level in the 2021 in the Atal Ranking of Institutions on Innovation Achievement (ARIIA), an Indian Ministry of Education initiative to rank all major higher educational institutions and universities in the country on indicators related to innovation and entrepreneurship development. The University has been rated as a high-performing institution in the implementation of Rashtriya Ucchatar Siksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a federal-aid program to boost the performance of state funded universities.

Sanjita Sharma

Dr. Sanjita Sharma is the Head of the Livestock Production Management and Dean of the Postgraduate Institute of Veterinary Education and Research (PIVER), Jaipur, Rajasthan. The Institute is affiliated with the Rajasthan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Bikaner, a state public university in Rajasthan. She has received many prestigious awards and recognition for her outstanding academic performance. She has been involved in teaching, research and extension activities in veterinary and animal sciences for the last thirty years. She has supervised master and doctoral student work in veterinary and animal sciences. She has served as faculty for two years at Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia. Her field of research is livestock in organic farming systems, and milk quality and safety. She has handled various extramural research projects and published peer-reviewed articles in various national and international journals. She has implemented various skill-based initiatives for the promotion of entrepreneurship among students, and has been involved in animal welfare, ethics, and environmental sustainability.

Home Institution: The Rajasthan University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Bikaner, Rajasthan, is a state agricultural university, with campuses in 22 districts in the state. The university offers undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD programs in veterinary and animal science, dairy and food science technology, as well as one in applied veterinary and animal science.

Rachna Khare

Dr. Rachna Khare is a Professor at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. SPA Bhopal has been declared an Institution of National Importance conferred by Parliament of India. Dr. Khare has served in several administrative roles at the institution. Her research interests are in the field of universal design and designing for individuals with special needs, which have earned her national and international grants and awards. In 2016, she was conferred the Inspired Teacher recognition by the President of India and was a Scholar-in-Residence at Rashtrapati Bhavan, the official residence of the President of India, as part of the program. In 2007, she received a Fulbright Doctoral and Professional Research fellowship. Dr. Khare has conducted several sponsored research projects with the All-India Council of Technical Education (AICTE), the University Grants Commission, and the Design Innovation Center Project of the Indian Ministry of Education. She has delivered talks in several countries on inclusive design and has more than 50 papers in various national and international journals and conferences. She has written three books and edited more than 15 peer-reviewed journals. She established the Centre for Human-Centric Research (CHCR), an organization that seeks to build a body of knowledge to address the design needs of diverse human populations, historically marginalized by common design practices.

Home Institution: The School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal, is an Institution of National Importance founded in 2008. The institute offers quality education in the fields of spatial planning and architecture. Ranked among the top ten in the National Institution Ranking Framework (NIRF) by the Indian Ministry of Education, the institution offers two undergraduate, seven postgraduate and doctoral programs in architecture, planning, design, conservation, landscape, urban design, urban planning, environmental planning, and transportation planning and management. It has a multidisciplinary faculty, state-of-the-art laboratories and research centers.

Nithyananda Kallur Venkateshmurthy

Dr. Nithyananda Kallur Venkateshmurthy is a faculty member and Chair of the General Management Program at the Indian Institute of Management, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu (IIM Trichy). He has more than 25 years of experience in teaching and consulting, both in academia and industry. Dr. Nithyananda teaches courses on legal aspects of business, marketing, entrepreneurship, technology management, and strategic management of intellectual property rights (SMIPR) at IIM Trichy. He has been teaching the SMIPR course in France for the last ten years. Before France, he has taught it in Singapore, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. He has published extensively in national and international journals, he is the author of three books, and he is currently working on two manuscripts. He has published three case studies in the Harvard Business School Case Repository.

He has trained over 500 executives and more than 1,000 faculty members on various legal aspects of business and intellectual property rights. He is currently establishing a Technology Transfer and Commercialization Office (TTCO) and an Incubation Center at IIM Trichy. He is also a Member of the International Relations Committee at the institute. He is also a Board Member for two private companies, and he serves as a consultant for a number of corporations.

Home Institution: IIM Trichy was established in 2011 by the Indian Ministry of Education. It offers three MBA programs in General Management, Human Resources and Executive MBA, and two doctoral programs (regular full-time PhD and part-time executive PhD). The student enrolment is currently around 1,000 and there are 35 full-time faculty members. IIM Trichy is currently ranked 17th by the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF), Indian Ministry of Education, in the “management” category.

Nandakumar Kalarikkal

Dr. Nandakumar Kalarikkal is a Professor at the School of Pure and Applied Physics at Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU), Kottayam, Kerala. He serves as a member of the University Syndicate (a statutory body of MGU), the Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC), the University Research Committee (URC), and the University Centre for International Cooperation (UCIC). His areas of research interest are nanostructured materials and applications; water, food and health security; circular economy; climate change; laser-matter interactions and computational nanoscience, and nanotechnology. He has organized several international seminars and workshops at MGU and delivered lectures at national and international conferences. He is the recipient of a number of national and international research awards and grants and has established state-of-the-art research facilities at MGU. Dr. Kalarikkal has supervised 30 master’s thesis and 25 doctoral dissertations. He holds six patents, and he has authored more than 30 books. He has produced more than 400 peer-reviewed publications with an H-index of 43 and 7,000 citations. He received a Master of Science degree in Industrial Physics and a PhD in Semiconductor Physics from Cochin University of Science and Technology, Kochi, Kerala.

Home Institution: Mahatma Gandhi University is a state public university in Kottayam, Kerala. Established in 1983, the university offers a range of programs at the postgraduate, MPhil and PhD levels. In 2020, MGU wan the Chancellor’s Award for Best University in Kerala, and The National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), the highest body of assessment and accreditation for higher education in India, granted MGU an A grade. In 2022, the National Institution Ranking Framework (NIRF) by the Indian Ministry of Education ranked MGU at the 31st position for the “university” category, and 52nd for the “overall” category.

Rajnish Jain

Dr. Rajnish Jain is Secretary at the University Grants Commission (UGC), which is the highest regulatory agency for higher education in India. Under his stewardship, the UGC has made significant advances in promoting quality higher education and implementing the National Education Policy 2020 in areas of multidisciplinary and holistic education, governance and curricular reforms, internationalization, skill education, digitalization of higher education, along with increasing access and promotion of gender and social equity in higher education. For over 33 years, Dr. Jain has made significant contributions as a teacher, researcher, trainer, administrator, and policymaker. Before his appointment as Secretary of UGC, he was a Professor at the Institute of Management Studies at Devi Ahilya University, Indore, and Nirma University, Ahmedabad, among other institutions. He has developed several academic courses and programs and has organized management development and training programs for organization of the public and private sector. His research and publications are in quality education, value-based education, services management, strategic management, and customer experience. He has guided 15 PhD research scholars. He represented India in numerous bilateral and multilateral forums for effective external stakeholder relationships and strategic engagement with foreign countries.

Home Institution: The University Grants Commission was established by an Act of Parliament in 1956 and is a statutory body under the aegis of the Indian Ministry of Education. The organization is responsible for coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of higher education in the country. India has a large postsecondary education system with more than 1,000 universities and over 42,000 colleges. The number of students enrolled in higher education is currently about 40 million across India. The UGC undertakes initiatives for access, equity, quality, affordability, accountability, excellence, and internationalization in higher education. It provides regulatory architecture, policy frameworks and guidelines, along with financial support to higher education institutions, faculty members and students. The UGC’s main office is in New Delhi, and it has six regional centers in Bhopal, Pune, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Guwahati, and Bengaluru.

Sanyogita Chadha

Dr. Sanyogita Chadha is a Professor of Fashion Design and the Regional Director at Pearl Academy, Bengaluru, Karnataka. She has a PhD in Anthropometry and has over three decades of experience in the fashion industry and academia. Dr. Chadha has held leadership positions at Karnavati University, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, and at the Gurukul School of Design, Jaipur, Rajasthan. She is a Board Member of Maharaja Sayajirao University, Vadodara, Gujarat, and she is on the Advisory Board at STYLUMIA, an Artificial Intelligence Company that offers analytics solutions for the fashion industry. She has been a jury member for PhD candidates at the National Institute of Fashion Technology, a federal public institute established in 2006.

Home Institution: Pearl Academy is an autonomous institution in the field of creative education with schools of design, fashion, contemporary media, and creative practice. With campuses in Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, and Bengaluru, the institution has received awards and recognition for design education from business organizations and the media. There are currently over 3,000 students enrolled across its four campuses.

Sadhana Naithani

Dr. Sadhana Naithani is a Professor at the Centre of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. She is the Coordinator of the Folklore Unit at JNU, an Honorary Fellow of the American Folklore Society, and the current President of the International Society for Folk Narrative Research.

She did her Ph.D. in the field of German Folkloristics. She has been interested in the transformation of the concept of folklore in different historical contexts-under British colonialism, in Germany after World War II, and in the Baltic countries under Soviet occupation. She is the author of In Quest of Indian Folktales (Indiana University Press, 2006), The Story Time of the British Empire (University Press of Mississippi, 2010), Folklore Theory in Post-war Germany (University Press of Mississippi, 2014) and Folklore in Baltic History, Resistance and Resurgence (University Press of Mississippi, 2019). Her novella: Elephantine (Red Squirrel Press, 2016) is based on her research in colonial forestry led by German scientists in British India. She is on the editorial boards of journals Marvels and Tales, Cultural Analysis, and Journal of the School of Languages.

Dr. Naithani is deeply interested in the relationship of human and non-human beings experienced in cultural-political contexts and expressed in narratives. As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar at University of California, Berkeley, she will explore the narratives of British colonizers about the wild non-human animals of the colonies. She will teach a graduate course in the Fall Semester and an undergraduate course in the Spring Semester around her research theme.

Manjusha V. Shelke

Dr. Manjusha Shelke is working as Principal Scientist in the Physical and Materials Chemistry division of CSIR-National Chemical Laboratory, Pune. Dr. Shelke is also an Associate Professor at AcSIR. She has completed her Ph.D. in chemistry from CSIR-Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute, Bhopal in 2006. She has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Institut d’électronique de Microélectronique et de anotechnologie, CNRS, Lille, France during 2007-08 sponsored by Embassy of France in India. She has been awarded a visiting scholarship in chemical sciences by Indo-US Science and Technology Forum and worked at Rice University, Houston, TX, USA during 2013-14. She has been elected as Kavli Fellow by National Academy of Sciences, USA in 2015 and as a Fellow of Maharashtra Academy of Sciences in 2018. In 2021 Science and Engineering Research Board of Govt. of India awarded her with SERB-POWER Fellowship. She has been invited as a Visiting Faculty at Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) academy since 2020 and on the research advisory board of Vellore Institute of Technology (VIT), Bhopal in 2022. She is a materials’ chemist and her research interests are in the development of high energy electrode materials for storage devices like rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors. She has published 70 journal articles, eight book chapters, six patents granted and 10 invention disclosures filed. 11 of her students graduated with PhD. In 2021, she has founded a spin-off company “Rechargion Energy Pvt. Ltd.” to take research from her lab to the market.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence research fellow, Dr. Shelke aims to understand the failure mechanisms in Lithium-Sulphur rechargeable battery cells, address them with interfacial engineering strategies and develop a working prototype with reasonable cycle life and high specific energy.