Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Amiya Kumar Jana

Dr. Amiya K. Jana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur. He has received research funds as principal investigator from DST, DAE (BRNS), CSIR, MHRD, and ISRO, among others. He has authored over 150 research articles in several international journals of repute. He is the sole author of three textbooks in the area of numerical analysis, modeling, simulation and control.

Dr. Jana has received numerous awards and recognitions, including Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK, 2023), Faculty Excellence Award (IIT Kharagpur, 2021), Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (Germany, 2017), inclusion in World’s Top 2% Scientists list (Stanford University, 2020 – 24), and is an editorial board member of Scientific Reports (Nature Group) and Frontiers in Control Engineering (Frontiers Publisher, Switzerland). His research focuses on renewable energy, clean fuel, desalination, process integration and control.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Jana is planning to work on the proton exchange membrane fuel cell with its optimization and control by the use of AI-based state estimator.

Debabrata Goswami

Prof. Debabrata Goswami joined IIT Kanpur as an associate professor in 2003, became a professor in 2010, and became a Professor with Higher Academic Grade (HAG) in 2017. He also held the five-year term of Prof. S. Sampath Chair-Professorship from 2018 at IIT Kanpur. He has received several awards and recognition for his research, which includes the Hoechst Advanced Technology Division Industrial Affiliates Fellowship for outstanding academic record in Princeton, the International Senior Research Fellowship award of the Wellcome Trust (UK), the Swarnajayanti Fellowship of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, and Thathachary Science Award (India). He is a Fellow of Optica (previously OSA), the Institute of Physics, the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers, and the Royal Society of Chemistry. His work in ultrafast optics and light-matter interactions has also been recognized by the 2019 Galileo Galilei Award of the International Commission of Optics. Prof. Goswami has published over 175 research articles in internationally reputed journals, several book chapters, and edited conference proceedings and books.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellow, Prof. Goswami is focusing on advancing femtosecond laser applications for laser machining toward nanofabrication, including additive and subtractive fabrication projects using ultrafast and multiphoton optical processes and thermal dynamics. His research will delve into the quantum processes initiated by femtosecond laser pulses interacting with materials, and this work promises to yield innovative tools and technologies with broad applications across science and industry.

Nitya Nand Gosvami

Dr. Nitya Nand Gosvami completed his BTech with honors in Metallurgical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology – Banaras Hindu University (IITBHU), India, in 2003 and completed his PhD at the National University of Singapore in 2008. In 2008, he joined the Leibniz Institute for New Materials (Saarbrücken, Germany) as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. In 2010, he joined University College London (London, United Kingdom) as a Research Associate, jointly working with the London Center for Nanotechnology. In 2012, he moved to the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Pennsylvania (United States) as a Research Project Manager. In 2016, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi (New Delhi, India), where he works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Dr. Gosvami’s research is focused on the study of mechanical and tribological behavior of engineering materials, disordered systems, and bioinspired nanopatterned surfaces at the nanoscale, where his group is investigating fundamental mechanisms of friction and wear, lubrication, and tribochemical processes in sliding contacts at the liquid-solid interfaces.

As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar, Dr. Gosvami is aiming to develop atomic-scale insights into how nanoparticles, when incorporated into industrial lubricants, reduce friction and wear between sliding contacts of mechanical components, including internal combustion engine components, electric vehicle transmissions, and wind turbine bearings. The goal is to establish a scientific basis for developing next-generation environment-friendly and energy-efficient lubricant formulations, enabling the adoption of green technologies by addressing major reliability issues in electric vehicles and wind turbines.

Debapriya Basu Roy

Dr. Debapriya Basu Roy received his PhD degree from IIT Kharagpur and was a post-doctoral fellow with the Technical University of Munich. He is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. His research interests include applied cryptography, hardware security, post-quantum cryptography, side channel analysis and digital VLSI. Some of his notable contributions in the domain of hardware security are efficient implementation of elliptic curve cryptography, side-channel leakage quantification and implementation of post-quantum cryptography on FPGAs.

In the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project, Dr. Basu Roy is aiming to implement and perform side channel analysis of a post-quantum secure lattice-based cryptographic algorithm. Due to the advancement of quantum computing, the security guarantees of public key algorithms have come under serious threat. In this project, Dr. Basu Roy’s aim is to develop a unified hardware implementation of three lattice-based cryptographic algorithms and perform a holistic side-channel analysis of the developed architecture.

Neha Sardana

Dr. Neha Sardana is an Associate Professor in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering (MME) at IIT Ropar. She received her BTech in MME from the IIT Roorkee in 2009, master’s in materials and manufacturing engineering from Technical University of Denmark in 2011 and a PhD in plasmonics from the International Max Planck Research Schools for Science and Technology of Nanostructures, IMPRS-MLU, Halle, Germany in 2015. After working for more than three years as a scientist at Institute of Nano Science and Technology, Mohali, Punjab and a short stint as an Assistant Professor at IIT Jodhpur, she joined IIT Ropar in 2018. Currently, she is the group leader of Nano Scale Engineering and Devices Lab at IIT Ropar. She is a member of Indian National Young Academy of Sciences (2021-26), young engineer awardee from Institute of Engineers India 2022 and young associate of Indian National Academy of Engineering 2023. She has more than 50 publications, eight book chapters, eight Indian patents and a startup on optical sensing to her credit.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr Sardana is focusing primarily on creating optical substrates for accurate monitoring of organochlorine agrochemicals. She will be exploring the use of MXenes to improve optical sensors when coupled with conventional plasmonic materials in an optical SPR-based sensing platform. The proposed study can be instrumental to the Initiative on Critical and Emerging Technology between India and the United States.

Nirupam Roy

Dr. Nirupam Roy is an Associate Professor and Convener of the Joint Astronomy Programme in the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He did MSc (2005) and PhD (2009) in Physics from the National Center for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA-TIFR). Subsequently, Dr. Roy was a Jansky Fellow (2009-12) at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA, and then a Humboldt Fellow (2013-15) at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn. He worked as an Assistant Professor of the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur (2015-16), before joining IISc in 2016. Dr. Roy has been awarded the Young Scientist Medal by the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) in 2013 and the Laxminarayana & Nagalaxmi Modali award of the Astronomical Society of India (ASI) in 2024. He has also served as one of the Ambassador Scientists of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in India during 2018-24.

The primary expertise of Dr. Roy is in the field of radio astronomy, and his research interests include study of the ISM and star formation, galactic novae, and observational cosmology.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Roy is planning to study low-frequency diffuse radio emission from Milky Way, other galaxies and galaxy clusters. These will be used to explore the nature of astrophysical turbulence as well as to address some of the challenges of detecting the cosmological 21-cm signal.

Haritha Bollinedi

Dr. Haritha Bollinedi earned her master’s degree from the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bengaluru, and completed her PhD at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. She currently serves as a Senior Scientist in the Division of Genetics at ICAR-IARI.

Dr. Bollinedi has made significant strides in rice grain quality and biofortification, focusing on enhancing the nutritional profile of rice, particularly of beta-carotene, zinc, protein, and phytic acid levels. Her research contributions include molecular characterization of transgenic Golden Rice lines, mapping of genes and QTLs associated with grain mineral nutrients and anti-nutritional factors, and the identification of a novel non-functional allele of the LOX3 gene to reduce bran rancidity. Additionally, she has characterized a large set of rice germplasm accessions for various grain quality traits and identified unique genetic stocks for high endosperm Zn, low phytic acid, low glycemic index, high bran stability, and so on. Furthermore, she has contributed to the development of fifteen rice varieties.

Dr. Haritha’s achievements have been recognized through prestigious awards such as the INSA and NASI Young Scientist Awards and the NAAS Associateship. She also plays an active role as the Convenor of the Young Scientist Forum, NAAS-YUVA, under the aegis of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences. To date, she has published over 60 research articles in esteemed peer-reviewed journals.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Haritha is working on deciphering the barriers of endosperm nutrient translocation in rice grain using single-cell genomics techniques.

Tanika Chakraborty

Dr. Tanika Chakraborty is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, specializing in Development Economics. Before joining IIM Calcutta, she worked at IIT Kanpur and DIW Berlin, after completing her PhD at Washington University in St. Louis. She is affiliated to IZA Bonn, CESifo Munich, and the Global Labor Organization.

Dr. Chakraborty’s research primarily focuses on informing policies that address human capital inequality. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Demography, and the Journal of Comparative Economics, among others. In addition to publishing in academic journals, she writes for print media and policy platforms such as VoxDev, Project Syndicate, and Ideas for India to reach out to a wider policy audience. She has also partnered extensively with various government bodies in India and served as an expert on the Minimum Wage committee of the Government of India.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) Fellowship at City College, City University of New York, Dr. Chakraborty is expanding on her ongoing research, exploring effective ways of reducing inequalities in health, a key component of human capital. She is examining the widespread shift in healthcare delivery models, from direct public provision to public-private partnerships. She will engage with students to develop a course on health policy that combines perspectives from the US and India. The goal is to contribute to the global dialogue on rising healthcare costs and growing health inequalities.

Susmita Sur-Kolay

Dr. Susmita Sur-Kolay is a Visting Professor of Computer Science in Ashoka University. Till 2024, she was a Professor in the Advanced Computing and Microelectronics Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Earlier, she was a Reader in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Jadavpur University, a post-doctoral fellow at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a Research Assistant at the Laboratory for Computer Science in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Dr Sur-Kolay’s research contributions are in algorithmic design automation for electronic and quantum circuits, fault modeling and testing, hardware security, and graph algorithms. She has co-authored several papers in international journals and refereed conference proceedings, three book chapters, and co-edited three books.

She has served on the committees of international conferences and on the editorial board of major journals. She was a Distinguished Visitor of IEEE Computer Society (India), and is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy and Indian National Academy of Engineering. She has received the President of India Gold Medal and Distinguished Alumnus Award at IIT Kharagpur, Women in Technology Leadership Award from VLSI Society of India and International Excellence Fellowship at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2024).

During her tenure of the Fulbright-Nehru Academic Excellence Fellowship at UC San Diego, Dr. Sur-Kolay is aiming to design efficient methods for the layout phase of mapping quantum algorithms to the target quantum hardware with error correction capabilities and to teach related courses.

Sonal

Dr. Sonal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi, where she teaches the history of colonial India and different dimensions of Indian and world history. She has previously taught at various undergraduate colleges of Delhi University, including Ramjas, Lady Shri Ram, Kamala Nehru, and Shivaji College.

A former Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow and Visiting Fellow at Yale Centre for British Art, Dr Sonal’s research interests focus on material and visual culture during East India Company rule in India. Her doctoral research Textures of Exchange: The Maratha States, the Mughals, and the English East India Company examined material culture in diplomacy between Indian rulers and the Company (mid-18th to mid-19th century). Currently, she is exploring colonial India’s visual cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow (Research and Teaching), Dr Sonal is investigating the satirical artworks published in the then-contemporary periodicals and newspapers that resonated with the sensibilities of the middle-class readership. She aims to unravel how caricatures reflected the socio-political commentary, serving as a medium for voices to critique the East India Company and British colonialism. In addition to her research, Dr. Sonal will teach visual cultures of colonial India and a survey course on Indian art.