Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

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.

Rajani Panchang

Dr. Rajani Panchang is an Assistant Professor at Savitribai Phule Pune University. She was recruited under UGC’s prestigious Faculty Recharge Program. She earned her PhD from CSIR – National Institute of Oceanography, Panaji, Goa, and secured tenured appointments as Woman Scientist at Agharkar Research Institute, Pune and SERB Fast-Track Scientist at IISER Pune under various research programs of the Government of India’s Department of Science & Technology. She is a geological oceanographer specializing in marine micropaleontology. While her forte remains Recent Benthic Foraminiferal taxonomy, her research interests are reconstruction of past climates, understanding human-climate interactions, monitoring coastal ecosystems and changing ocean dynamics, particularly coastal processes and ecosystems in light of climate change. She has research grants from the Ministry of Earth Sciences to study ocean acidification in the Arabian Sea. She is an ardent teacher and a PhD supervisor passionate about society-centric ocean research.

Dr. Panchang is a recipient of the Mani Shankar Shukla Gold Medal & Research Fellowships from DAAD, CSIR, Lila Poonawalla Foundation and Hindustan Unilever. She has been felicitated by former President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam for being an outstanding LILA Fellow in the field of Oceanography.

During her fellowship, Dr. Panchang is quantifying the responses of marine bio-calcifiers, essentially coral reef foraminifera, to ocean acidification through field studies in the Florida Reef Tract and laboratory experiments. Her work will also integrate analysis of atmospheric data and bio-calcifying specimens collected since the 1980s.

Suddhasatwa Basu

Prof. Suddhasatwa Basu completed PhD in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is Federation of Indian Petroleum Industry (FIPI) Chair Professor on Clean Energy at IIT Delhi. He was the Director of CSIR-Institute of Minerals & Materials Technology, Bhubaneswar and the Director of Central Institute of Mining & Fuel Research, Dhanbad. He has vast work experience on development of materials for energy conversion and storage devices – green H2 generation & fuel cell technologies and Na/Zn ion battery, electro-synthesis, and waste-to-wealth technologies for a circular economy. He has published more than 280 articles in high-impact journals with H-index 53, applied for 16 patents of which 10 were granted and transferred to technologies. He is a Fellow of National Academy of Science of India, Indian National Academy of Engineering, Royal Society of Chemistry UK. He has received many awards. He has been editor, associate editor and editorial board member of several international journals.

During the fellowship at Washington University in St Louis, Prof Basu is working on development of technology for conversion of biomass/stubble-derived chemicals to hydrogen and furan dicarboxylic acid (FDCA) using an electrolyzer. The simultaneous production of FDCA alongside hydrogen in an electrolyzer will not only help to establish hydrogen economy but disrupt the polymer industry by producing monomers of bioplastics. The electrolyzer stack development envisaged will be operated under ambient conditions, making it environment-friendly and less energy-intensive by utilizing electrical power from solar photovoltaic resources.

Revathi Ponnuswamy

Dr. Revathi Ponnuswamy is a Senior Scientist (Plant Breeding) at ICAR-Indian Institute of Rice Research (IIRR), Hyderabad, India with 17 years of rich experience in rice research. She was awarded a PhD in Genetics from the premier agricultural research institution, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. She is one of the meritorious scientists who as Principal Investigator successfully spearheaded multi-disciplinary research projects by securing competitive research grants from various organizations, including Department of Biotechnology, Department of Science and Technology, Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), and ICAR.

Her achievements as a successful researcher and plant breeder are reflected in her peer-reviewed publications and development of high-yielding, climate-resilient, and stress-tolerant rice varieties and hybrids to smallholder farmers of India. She has received several awards and fellowships. In her capacity as an educator, she has mentored and guided the academic pursuits of several MSc and PhD students.

During her fellowship at University of California, Davis, Dr Revathi is training in a breakthrough synthetic apomixis technology from the lab where it was invented. Her research project aims to enhance rice production and productivity amidst rapidly changing climatic conditions through synthetic apomixis, which could save on rice hybrid seed cost of millions of resource-poor farmers in India.

Salvador Lyngdoh

Dr. Salvador Lyngdoh, Scientist E and Associate Professor, is a wildlife biologist specializing in carnivore ecology, movement ecology, habitat conservation, and human-wildlife interactions. With extensive research experience in the Indian Himalayas and other biodiverse regions, he has contributed significantly to understanding lesser-known species such as Himalayan wolves, dholes, snow leopards, pangolins and clouded leopards. He is a member of IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) specialists’ groups on cats, canids, pangolins and small carnivores.

During his Fulbright-Kalam Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence, Dr. Lyngdoh is studying the dynamics of wolf predation, prey behavior and habitat change in the context of climate change. Grey wolves play essential roles in most of their ranges by exercising top-down cascade effects on ecosystems. The proposed study aims to understand how climate change (past, present, and future) can affect predation by wolves (consumptive effects). It also aims to examine, if otherwise, climate-driven manifestations (environmental stressors) of non-consumptive nature can influence predation behavior (bottom-up cascades).

Anuradha Marwah

Anuradha Marwah, novelist, playwright, and professor of English at Zakir Husain Delhi College, Delhi, is known for her insightful exploration of contemporary issues, storytelling, and building enduring characters in the world of literature.

Her latest novel, Aunties of Vasant Kunj (2024) was shortlisted for the Ruskin Bond Best Fiction Award at the Banaras Lit Fest and long listed for the Times of India Best Fiction AutHer Award 2025. Her play Ismat’s Love Stories (2016) continues to be performed and had six housefull shows in Bengaluru last year. Her Hindustani adaptation of Euripedes’ Medea (2019), that she also directed, had fifteen shows and featured in India’s first community-curated theatre festival at Studio Safdar, New Delhi.

Anuradha’s work is taught in academic courses across American and Indian universities and schools. Her short story Womanscape in Tis Hazari is included in the Indian School Certificate textbook Treasure Chest. An excerpt from her novel The Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta (1993, 2025) is part of Voices: An Anthology of Indian Women Writers, prescribed by the National Council of Educational Research and Training.

Anuradha was awarded the prestigious Charles Wallace Writer’s Residency (2001) in the UK and the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (FNAPE) Fellowship to the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (2017), where she served as Visiting Faculty at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Study of Global Change.

In Hollins University as Fall 2025 Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence she will teach a special interest course on her adaptation of Medea and engage the broader Roanoke community in a reading-performance project.

Gunanka Dundanayakanahally Basavaraju

Mr. Gunanka D. B., an Indian Forest Service officer, has served as Additional Secretary to the Government of Meghalaya, with over 16 years of experience in technology and public administration. He has led state-wide programs in natural resource management, climate resilience, and digital governance.

Gunanka spearheaded the World Bank-financed Community-Led Landscape Management Project, which pioneered the Village Community Facilitator model, training more than 14,000 local champions in community-led natural resource management, spring mapping, bamboo resource assessments, and seedball-based afforestation. He led the launch of GREEN Meghalaya, India’s first state-scale Payment for Ecosystem Services program, empowering communities to conserve over 1,000 sq. kms of forest. He championed the conservation of over 150 living root bridges through cooperative federations and community co-nomination for UNESCO World Heritage status. Under the JICA-financed MegLIFE program, he strengthened community-based forest management, cooperative livelihood models, and climate-resilient bamboo value chains.

Gunanka advanced geospatial governance by promoting the State Geo Portal and UAV Centre, expanded open data policies, and developed agile management information systems with real-time monitoring tools. He played a key role in integrating service delivery, grievance redress, and community data collection through the MeghalayaOne digital governance platform.

An electronics and communications engineer from R.V. College of Engineering, Bengaluru, Gunanka is pursuing the Fulbright-Nehru Master’s Fellowship to deepen his expertise in sustainable development, institutional reform, and technology-enabled governance. He aims to leverage this training to design scalable, community-driven governance systems that enhance climate resilience, inclusive growth, and data-driven policymaking in India’s public administration.