Meet Our India Fulbrighters Archive - Page 4 of 42

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.

Rojalin Padhan

Ms. Rojalin Padhan is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. Her doctoral thesis focuses on phenomenological implications of beyond the Standard Model theories, the theory of neutrino mass generation, and dark matter. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed international journals, and she has presented at several national and international conferences.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Physics from Gangadhar Meher College, Sambalpur, Odisha, and a master’s degree in Physics from Sambalpur University, Odisha. She has qualified in examinations such as the JEST, Joint CSIR-UGC JRF-NET, and GATE. She also holds a Diploma in Advanced Physics from the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, Odisha.

Apart from Physics, she has an interest in social work. She enjoys spending time on the beach and in the mountains, as well as gardening. She loves to travel to different places and to meet people of various cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, she is exploring the potential reach of the proposed multi-TeV Muon Collider to search for beyond the Standard Model particles. She is primarily working on collider signatures of models that predict dark matter candidates and address the origin of the observed neutrino masses.

Nijesh P

Mr. Nijesh P is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Geology, Centre for Advanced Study, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Nijesh specializes in hydrogeology. He is well-versed in hydrological field investigation, hydrogeochemical analysis, hydrogeochemical modelling, remote sensing and GIS, mineral identification and exploration, and geophysical survey. He has published papers in various reputed national and international journals. The most recent one deals with the study of isotopic characteristics and water quality with emphasis on fluoride in the water-scarce Lalitpur district of the Bundelkhand region in India.

Nijesh holds a master’s degree in Applied Geology from Anna University, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, where he passed with first class. He has worked as a Junior Research fellow at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, before enrolling into his doctorate program. He is a hodophile and loves to explore new destinations. He also has a keen interest in music and is an amateur guitarist.

Nijesh is pursuing a doctoral program on “Hydrogeological and Isotopic evolution of springs and their management strategies in a micro watershed of Kosi River basin at Kumaun Lesser Himalaya Uttarakhand, India.” He is widening his research data and inferences further at Penn State University through the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship. The research opens a new door toward the methodologies and parameters used in hydrogeology for the study of springs.

Ankita Nandi

Ms. Ankita Nandi is a Ph.D. scholar at the NeuRonICS Lab, Department of Electronic Systems engineering (DESE), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. She is interested in designing low power VLSI circuits using digital, analog and mixed signal techniques for error resilient applications. She takes keen interest in computations in the probabilistic domain and is developing circuits which accommodate them. Apart from these, she is also interested in approximate computing, image processing applications and error correction decoders. She has communicated and published her work in prestigious international journals and conferences.

Ms. Nandi has been the 5th rank holder in her pre-university board examinations. She received her B.Tech. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the National Institute of Technology (NIT) Meghalaya with the President Gold Medal and the Institute Gold Medal. She completed her M.Tech. from the Electrical Engineering Department of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Gandhinagar. She has also been selected as the Prime Minister’s Research Fellow (PMRF) in August 2021 and is availing this scholarship instead of the institutional fellowship.

Ms. Nandi wants to design a low power Analog Neuromorphic Probabilistic Processor for real-time deployment in portable and hand-held products during her tenure of Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship.

Additionally, Nandi is an avid orator and holds a diploma in painting. Being a food lover, Nandi also enjoys cooking different cuisines and loves listening to music.