Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Anjineyulu Kothakota

Dr. Anjineyulu Kothakota, is working as a Scientist in CSIR- National Institute for Interdisciplinary Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. He has done his bachelors and master’s in food technology from Andhra Pradesh and Punjab respectively and Ph.D. in Agricultural Processing and Food Engineering from GBPUAT, Uttarakhand. He has a well proven track record of achievements in the field of post-harvest technologies and agri-waste management and has successfully developed technologies for conversion of agricultural residues to biodegradable products. The technology to produce such biodegradable products has so far been transferred to 18 companies.. A vital impact of these products is the reduction of the carbon footprint by 60 % when compared with plastic and paper counterparts, jobs for 5,000 to 7,000 rural workers; and additional income for 100 to 200 farmers for their raw material waste. He has also completed projects worth INR 3 crores from various funding agencies and private multinational companies like ITC Ltd. He has also recipient of several accolades like BRICS Young Scientist award 2023, Kerala State Young Scientist Award-2023, INAE –Young Engineer Award 2022, ICAR-NAAS Young Scientist Award 2021, ICAR-NAAS Associate Award 2023, CSIR Award for Science and Technology Innovations for Rural Development (CAIRD) 2020.

During Fulbright fellowship, he is focusing on the development and optimization non-thermal processing techniques for improvement of biodegradable food packaging materials sourced for U.S. based agri biomass like corn wastes, soybean wastes at South Dakota State University.

Kalyan K. Mondal

Dr. Kalyan K. Mondal is presently working as Joint Director (Research) at the ICAR-National Institute of Biotic Stress Management, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India. Prior to joining ICAR-NIBSM, he worked as Principal Scientist at Division of Plant Pathology, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He worked extensively on the bacterial type-3-secretion-system (T3SS)-effectors and how bacterial pathogens use the effectors to subvert plant immune responses, PTI/ETI. He profiled the T3SS-effectors in two important bacterial pathogens, Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. punicae (Xap) and X. oryzae pv. oryzae (Xoo) infecting pomegranate and rice. His group identified key effectors (XopF, XopR in Xoo; XopC2, XopL, XopN in Xap) that immensely contribute to suppress plant immune responses. Using Y2H system his team identified the interactor(s) for effectors and further demonstrated that silencing the interactors in host plants led to disease resistance. Dr. Kalyan is a Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, Dr. Mondal is investigating the TAL effector PthXo2 of Xoo and its functional role in activating OsSWEET15 during blight disease development using CRISPR-Cas editing tools. This work may help understanding OsSWEET-mediated pathogenesis and identify novel targets to counter bacterial blight disease in rice.

Utsav Shukla

Utsav Shukla, a civil servant of the Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS), works at the intersection of railroad network planning, operations, regional development and urban transport. He has been working for 10 years in northeast India, connecting habitations and nurturing opportunities for improving the living conditions of millions. Hailing from Varanasi, the spiritual center of India, and trained as a medical doctor at Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Medical College, Indore, Utsav has been instrumental in designing people-centric infrastructure, sustainably dovetailing into the eco-sensitive milieu of the region.

Over the last decade, he has headed operations and business verticals, providing policy inputs on freight rebates and cargo aggregation, giving small agro-producers of the region access to national and international markets. He was pivotal in planning, coordinating and executing rail connectivity projects to Tripura, Mizoram, Manipur and Nagaland. For the safe and successful operations of 232 Shramik specials (trains carrying stranded people) while resuscitating the supply chain of life-saving drugs and essential commodities in six northeastern states during the COVID-19 pandemic, he was awarded the National Railway Award 2021, the highest honor for any railway servant by the Minister of Railways, Government of India.

In his latest assignment at the Northeast Frontier Railway’s headquarters in Guwahati, Utsav influenced the operationalization of international connectivity links with Bangladesh and Nepal. Further, his commitment to wildlife conservation and sustainable development has institutionalized effective mitigation mechanisms along the elephant corridors in northeast India, reducing elephant deaths by 60%. Anchoring station redevelopment projects in Guwahati and New Jalpaiguri under the Amrit Bharat scheme, he is currently working on integrating the passenger and freight railway transit nodes with the urban transportation system.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Utsav is studying urban planning to gain insights into policies, technologies and institutions which can make cities more humane, livable and equitable. He intends to explore leadership roles and reforms in governance to bring about citizen engagement in delivering urban services.

Dinesh Kumar

Mr. Dinesh Kumar teaches biology to grades 11 and 12 at a Government Girls’ Senior Secondary School in Ajnala, Amritsar, Punjab. With more than 20 years of teaching experience, he oversees the functioning of the science and biology laboratory in the school. He has a double master’s in zoology and English.

Mr. Kumar received the Malti Gyan Peeth Puraskar in 2018 from the Vice President of India for his contributions to the field of education. He participated in a professional development program at the University of Toronto sponsored by the Punjab Government. He served as a mentor teacher and a master resource person for teacher training programs. He actively participated in national and international training sessions, workshops, and seminars, covering a wide array of subjects and objectives.

Mr. Kumar sees the Fulbright TEA program as a transformative opportunity to enhance his teaching skills and bring new perspectives to his students and colleagues. During the program, he is exploring innovative approaches to biology education, incorporating technology in the classroom, and understanding global best practices.

Upon his return to India, Mr. Kumar plans to integrate the knowledge gained from the Fulbright TEA program into his teaching methods with a focus on creating a more engaging and interactive learning environment for his students. He envisions sharing his experiences with his fellow educators and contributing to the improvement of biology education in the local community and beyond.

Aiman Wahab

Ms. Aiman Wahab is an English language teacher at Jamia Middle School. She completed her postgraduation in English literature from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2022. She worked as Digital Academician at Bloombrain Learning Solutions. As a mentor at Bloombrain, she provided spoken English classes to adults and enabled them to cultivate their soft skills, ace their job interviews, and achieve proficiency in the English language.

Ms. Wahab is a poetry enthusiast and has a passion for teaching language using learner-centric methods. Her poetry and articles have been published in journals, online magazines, and anthologies. Her zealous participation in slam poetry, nukkad naatak, and qawwali performances during her graduation has enabled her to use these as pedagogical tools in her classroom and to create a vibrant learning experience for her students.

As a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant, Ms. Wahab intends to create cultural awareness about India’s rich heritage and employ interactive methods to introduce Hindi language and literature to her students. She looks forward to exploring new techniques of teaching foreign languages through her experience in the U.S.

Disha Wadekar

Ms. Disha Wadekar is an independent advocate practicing before the Supreme Court of India and various High Courts in India. Her practice focuses on representing marginalized communities on matters pertaining to constitutional law and anti-discrimination law. She has worked on many constitution bench matters, including the famous Sabarimala temple entry case and the economically weaker section (EWS) reservation case. In 2022, she was appointed the Assistant Special Public Prosecutor by the Government of Rajasthan.

An engineer-turned-lawyer, Ms. Wadekar completed her undergraduate law degree from Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), Pune. She has taught courses on law and marginalization at O.P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, and National Law University, Delhi, and has delivered lectures at various institutions. She is also a member of the academic committee on Denotified Tribes at SPPU, Pune, and of the research ethics committee at the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (IIDS), Delhi.

In 2021, Ms. Wadekar co-founded Community for the Eradication of Discrimination in Education and Employment (CEDE)—an organization working towards a diverse and inclusive Indian legal profession and the judiciary. She has also provided consultancy to organizations, such as the Centre for Women’s Development Studies, Delhi. Her work has been published by reputed journals and online portals.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Ms. Wadekar is pursuing LLM from Columbia University. She hopes to learn about the feminist, indigenous, and critical race critiques of the justice system. She believes her fellowship will enable her to contribute to litigation, research, and advocacy interventions that foreground rights-based anti-caste and intersectional perspectives in the Indian justice system.

Vidya Viswanathan

Ms. Vidya Viswanathan is an environmental policy researcher. She consults with multiple state agencies and NGOs as a domain expert. Currently, she is working with Social Accountability Forum for Action and Research (SAFAR) leading their national initiative of building accountability and transparency for common resource governance. In the past, she led the Environmental Justice Program at the Center for Policy Research (CPR), a leading policy think tank in Delhi. Ms. Viswanathan was CPR’s youngest Program Director. Under her leadership, the program restored common resources through improved regulatory compliance, thereby protecting farmlands and water bodies from industrial contamination in over 150 energy and infrastructure projects. She has also worked with the government through her engagement with the Ministries of Labor and Employment and of Rural Development.

Ms. Viswanathan is the co-author of several articles and papers that discuss the efficacy of environmental regulations in protecting ecology and managing social conflicts induced by land use changes on the ground. Her research interests include methods of strengthening environmental governance, including regulations, with a focus on building better and collaborative interfaces between citizens and regulators to promote India’s ecological security.

Ms. Viswanathan graduated top of her class and received numerous awards for her academic and non-academic achievements at the postgraduate level. She holds a Master of Arts in social work with a specialization in community organization and development practice from the prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and a bachelor’s in economics from the University of Delhi.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellow, Ms. Viswanathan aims to acquire specialized skills in policymaking and soft skills of leadership and advocacy. She is excited about experiential learning from a diverse and accomplished cohort that will help her refine the pathways of documenting, articulating, and building compelling insights from the grassroots into environmental policy design.

Pavithra Venkataraman

Ms. Pavithra Venkataraman is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. Her research is in the area of evolutionary biology. Specifically, she uses experimental methods to understand the evolution of proteins, and theoretical methods to understand the evolution of metabolic cooperation and sympatric speciation in a population.

Ms. Venkataraman completed her bachelor’s in chemical engineering from M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru. In 2020, she was awarded the Best Outgoing Chemical Engineering Student by the Bangalore Chapter of the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers. She enjoys exploring new places, cuisines and cultures. She also likes learning new languages.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, she will work with Prof. Sergey Kryazhimskiy to characterize the variation in the local structure of fitness landscapes to assess the predictability of evolution. This work is important to build our understanding of the process of evolution as a whole and has implications for pathogen evolution and human health.

Divya Swaminathan

Ms. Divya Swaminathan is a Ph.D. scholar at the Infant – Toddler Language Development and Intervention Lab, Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS), Bengaluru. Before joining NIMHANS for her Ph.D., Ms. Swaminathan worked at the St. John’s National Academy of Health Sciences, Bengaluru, where she worked on developing an early screening tool for identifying increased likelihood for autism (HL-ASD) in infants between 9-18 months. She is a passionate clinician – researcher with expertise in detection of and intervention for autism.

Ms. Swaminathan’s current area of research focuses on early caregiver speech (CGS) and its impact on the development of communication and language skills in infants at HL-ASD. She is using automatic speech recognition (ASR) models to evaluate early CGS.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Ms. Swaminathan has joined Dr. Marisa Casillas’s lab. Ms. Swaminathan is working on improving existing ASR models that are sensitive to a multilingual setup. More accurate ASR models will help automatize amount of CGS that otherwise require laborious hand annotation

Devika Singh Shekhawat

Ms. Devika Singh Shekhawat is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University, Delhi. She has a master’s in sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her research interests lies at the intersection of gender and labor studies, public health, migration studies, and developmental issues.

Ms. Shekhawat is a writer, educator and research scholar. She has written on the history and memory of migration of tea plantation workers of Assam for Zubaan Publication and co-authored a book chapter with the Programme of Social Actions – The Research Collective on the Ecological Crisis of Shrimp Aquaculture and discourses of migration and infiltration in Coastal Odisha. She has been a part of multiple projects that study rural public healthcare infrastructure, ecological conservation and labor relations in northeast India. Her research on the work of ASHA workers in tea plantations during the pandemic has been published as a book chapter with Northeast Social Research Centre and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group.

Her Ph.D. research project explores the relationship between health and labor that manifests itself in the body of the worker and their everyday life. She engages with the nature of work, the production process that affects the health of the worker and the conditions for ailments and disease created for the worker in the tea plantations of Assam. Through a study of labor relations and structural conditions of work, her research attempts to explore how health and labor operate in tea plantations.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellowship, Ms. Shekhawat is working with Dr. Sarah Besky at the South Asia Program at Cornell University to carry forward her Ph.D. research work. She is focusing on how conditions of structural reproduction of ill-health are produced and understood within the plantation economy.