Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Ujjwal Maulik

Prof. Ujjwal Maulik is a full Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University since 2004. He was also the former head of the same department. He has worked in many universities and research laboratories in Australia, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia and U.S. and also delivered lectures in many more countries. He is the Fellow of India (INAE), India, National Academy of Science India (NASI), International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), US, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), U.S., Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA), Singapore and Distinguish Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He is a Distinguish Speaker of IEEE as well as ACM. His research interests include machine learning, pattern analysis, data science, bioinformatics and computational biology, multi-objective optimization, social networking, IoT and autonomous car. In these areas he has published ten books, more than three hundred fifty papers, mentored several start-ups, filed several patents and already guided twenty five doctoral students. His other interests include outdoor sports and classical music.

During his tenure as Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship Prof. Maulik is working for the better understanding of newly developed NicE-seq technology for chromatin accessibility through the application of artificial intelligence (AI) methods. This research has the potential to uncover novel regulatory mechanisms and advance our understanding of the functional genomics landscape. The AI-driven approaches can expedite and enhance chromatin accessibility studies, leading to advancements in various fields, including gene regulation, disease mechanisms, and therapeutic development.

Pradeep Kumar Misra

Prof. Pradeep Kumar Misra is a Professor and Director of the Centre for Policy Research in Higher Education (CPRHE) at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi. His research specializations are higher education, teacher education, and educational technology.

He has received several prestigious international research scholarships like the Commonwealth Academic Fellowship of CSC, UK; Doctoral and Senior Researcher Scholarship of DAAD, Germany; Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar Scholarship of European Commission; National Scholarship of Slovak Republic; MASHAV Scholarship of Israel Government; and Research Exchange Scholarship of FMSH, France.

He widely published nationally and internationally, completed research and development projects, and developed educational media programs. His recent books, Teaching Competencies for 21st Century Teachers: Practical Approaches to Learning (Routledge, 2024) and Learning and Teaching for Teachers (Springer, 2021), impact teachers’ teaching practices globally.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, Prof. Misra is examining the policies and practices of different U.S. universities to gain insights into how they integrate technology to offer EQUAL educational opportunities to their students. Through his research, Prof. Misra aims to benefit Indian and U.S. universities to learn valuable lessons and take necessary cautions when incorporating technology into their academic programs.

Ashutosh Kumar

Ashutosh Kumar is an Associate Professor of History at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He earned his Ph.D. from the History Department of the University of Delhi, where he also taught from 2012 to 2014. He received South-South Exchange Program for Research on the History of Development (SEPHIS), a Government of Netherlands funded program Fellowship during his Ph.D. He was fellow at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom; Yale University, USA; Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi; the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), New Delhi, and at Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla. He is president of Indian Association for South Asian Studies (IASAS) and Chairman of Centre for Alternative Studies in Social Sciences, New Delhi.

His most recent publications include Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies, 1830-1920’, Cambridge University Press, 2017 and ‘Girmitiyas and Global Indian Diaspora: Origins, Memories and Identities’ Cambridge University Press, 2023.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence scholar, Dr. Kumar is exploring issue of rights of Indian indentured laborers on colonial sugar plantations during nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the letters, petitions and depositions of indentured Indian migrants with a particular emphasis on the letters they wrote in regional Indian language. His project analyses such laborers’ letters and makes the case that Indian indentured laborers were able to fight for their “rights”, natural and contractual with planters and the colonial government through petitions, in addition to being able to voice their feelings and concerns on a variety of other matters.

Manzoor Koyakutty

Dr Manzoor Koyakutty is a Professor at Amrita Center for Nanoscience and Molecular Medicine, Kochi. He has worked extensively in molecular mechanisms responsible for cancer progression, drug-resistance, and tumor immunology, and developed many novel cancer-nanomedicine formulations and immunotherapeutic for leukemia, liver tumor and glioblastoma. His lab currently investigates systemic immune-suppression in peripheral organs as well as local tumor-microenvironment and developing novel nano-bio engineering tools to overcome such immune-suppression.

He has published > 150 papers in peer reviewed journals including Biomaterials, Small, J. of Controlled Release, Sci. Reports, Int. J Immunopharmacology with H-index 48 and citation 10530, and filed 40 patents of which 20 granted and 06 licensed for translational development. He was elected as Fellow of National Academy of Science, India (2017), top 2% scientist by Stanford University rating, 2022, received Amrita University Faculty Gold Medal 2023, and Chancellors Award 2024.

During the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship, he is working with Dr Henry Brem and Dr Betty Tylor, Glioma Center, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, USA, for the combinatorial targeting of brain tumor immuno-biology using intracranially injectable nano-hydrogel system. This work may help glioma patients to have better therapeutic outcome.

Naorem Kiranmala Devi

Dr. Naorem Kiranmala Devi currently serves as an Associate Professor at the University of Delhi. She holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Delhi.

Her research focuses on demographic and genomic variations among populations, particularly in India’s northeast region. Dr. Devi specializes in nutritional anthropology, biochemical genetics, and molecular anthropology. Through her research initiatives she has extensively explored the population specific risk factors of cardio-metabolic disorders in India along with the associated genetic and epigenetic alterations. With substantial experience in academia, she has contributed to course development, conference organization, and research administration. She has published over 40 research articles and book chapters, exploring diverse topics such as cardiovascular health, genetic polymorphisms, epigenetic studies, and socio-cultural determinants of health. Additionally, she actively engages in community service, particularly in raising awareness about health issues such as thalassemia and hypertension through outreach programs and screening camps.

Dr. Kiranmala’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project aims to identify and understand the implicit cultural components of the hypertension management programs in the U.S. and India, and work with local experts to explore ways to develop a culturally appropriate intervention module for the management of hypertension in high-risk communities of Punjab, India.

Lalitha Kamath

Prof Lalitha Kamath is Professor and Chairperson of the Centre for Urban Policy and Governance, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. She has a Ph.D. in Urban Planning and Policy Development from Rutgers University.

Prof Kamath’s research interests include urban governance, planning, infrastructure, urban informality, and critical pedagogies. She writes on dominant forms of urban transformations in the Global South – both the structural violence of spatial transformation and processes of slow violence to urban environments. Her writing also demonstrates the agency of marginalized groups in challenging dominant urbanisms through ethnography, film and multimedia formats (see https://www.inhabitedsea.org/the-sea-and-the-city and https://makebreak.tiss.edu/)

Based on her ongoing work on climate planning in Mumbai, in her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Prof Kamath is doing two comparisons with estuarine cities in the U.S. and South Asia. First, to illuminate how expert-led planning interventions have marginalized littoral communities/environments and also how these communities demonstrate ‘ordinary’ expertise in climate changed cities. Second, to deepen cross-fertilization between Northern and Southern theoretical perspectives that challenge dominant planning expertise by building from the situated expertise of marginalized communities. This will help catalyze more just climate planning across both South and North

Ajay Gogia

Dr Ajay Gogia is an Additional Professor in the Department of Medical Oncology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences. He received his M.B.B.S, M.D. (Internal Medicine) degree from Banaras Hindu University, D.M. (Medical Oncology) from AIIMS, New Delhi.

He has over 17 years of working and teaching experience in Medical Oncology and specializes in Breast Cancer and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. His research is well published with more than 400 peer-reviewed articles in National and International oncology journals He has received the Dronacharya Award for his excellence from the Health Minister of India.

Dr. Ajay Gogia’s Fulbright-Nehru project aims to understand the molecular pathogenesis of triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) and see the impact of Carboplatin and /or PARP inhibitor with standard dose-dense neoadjuvant chemotherapy on BRCA-associated triple-negative breast cancer. The precise stratification of TNBC is crucial for the development of potent standardized and targeted therapies, as it has a very poor prognosis. BRCA mutational status is the only clinically validated biomarker for personalized therapy in TNBC.

Pijush Ghosh

Prof. Pijush Ghosh is a professor in the Department of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Madras. His research group focuses on design and fabrication of stimuli responsive soft actuators. Solvent and light are the two major stimuli that his group is working on. He applies molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the underlying mechanism involved in solvent triggered actuation and polymer-solvent interaction. His group also works on developing polymer-clay and polymer-concrete interfaces for different civil engineering projects. Mechanical investigation of cluster crystals is another area of his research interest.

Prof. Ghosh received his undergraduate degree in civil engineering from Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur Howrah, MTech from IIT Kanpur and Ph.D. from North Dakota State University. He did a brief postdoc at Johns Hopkins University. He worked for about three years in URS corporation before joining IIT Madras in 2011.

Besides research and teaching, Prof. Ghosh takes a deep interest in rural education. He has started an initiative called ‘Teach to Learn’ (www.teachtolearn.co.in)  about 10 years back, which focus on connecting the premier institute of the country with rural schools applying different education models.

Sutapa Dutta

Sutapa Dutta is Professor of English at Gargi College, University of Delhi. She has a Ph.D. in English Literature from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi. Her research interests and publications are on eighteenth and nineteenth-century writings, and cover gender, education, and identity in colonial India.

She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, London, and has been a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. She has received several national and international grants for research work and has published extensively. She has authored British Women Missionaries in Bengal, 1793-1861, and Disciplined Subjects: Schooling in Colonial Bengal, and has edited Mapping India: Transitions and Transformations, 18th -19th Century, British Women Travellers: Empire and Beyond 1770-1870 and Making the ‘Woman’: Discourses of Gender in 18th-19th Century India.

Prof. Sutapa Dutta’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence project seeks to study the role of American women missionaries in India in the 19th century, and their contribution towards female education and health care. A critical understanding of their agency in the past will enable us to perceive present shifts in perceptions of women’s question by evangelists and conservative religious denominations across social and religious platforms in the U.S. and India.

 

Vasudharani Devanthan

Dr Vasudharani Devanthan is Associate Professor, Department of Biology and Associate Dean of Students at IISER Tirupati. Dr Devanathan’s research group at IISER Tirupati is engaged in understanding the structure and functional changes induced in retinal neurons in altered metabolic conditions such as hyperglycemia and hypoxia. Their research will contribute to understanding signaling mechanisms underlying diabetic retinopathy and the impact of glucose insult to neurons in long term diabetes. Collaborating with clinicians in Tirupati area, she is also engaged in novel biomarkers for Glioblastoma.

Dr Devanathan completed her postgraduate degree from the University of Madras and was working in Astra Zeneca, Bengaluru as a junior scientist. She completed her Ph.D. from Center for Molecular Neurosciences in Hamburg. She did her postdoctoral studies in university hospitals of Duesseldorf and Tübingen. She returned to India and had a short stint at the M.S University of Baroda (Dr Vikram Sarabhai Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology) as a teaching faculty. She has been with IISER Tirupati since its inception from 2015.

Dr Devanathan’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project is focused on understanding the electrophysiological changes in retinal neurons altered glucose and will be engaged in mouse behavioral studies.