Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Debasish Borah

Dr. Debasish Borah is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. He obtained his MSc-PhD dual degree from IIT Bombay in 2012 and subsequently worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics, Tezpur University before joining IIT Guwahati in 2015. He has received several awards, including the Canadian Commonwealth Fellowship, Young Scientist Medal from the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Young Scientist Award from the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) and the Government of Assam, India among others.

Dr. Borah’s research interest lies in the area of dark matter (DM), baryon asymmetry of the universe (BAU) and the origin of neutrino mass which cannot be explained by the standard model (SM) of particle physics, motivating the need for beyond standard model (BSM) physics. During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Borah is planning to study different BSM scenarios explaining the origin of BAU with the aim of probing them at ongoing and future colliders through conventional and new search strategies. He also plans to find synergy among collider probes and several indirect detection prospects at gravitational wave and cosmology experiments.

Sudip Bhattacharyya

Prof. Sudip Bhattacharyya is a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Maharashtra. He is also the current Payload Manager of the Soft X-ray Telescope aboard AstroSat, the first dedicated Indian astronomy satellite. He primarily works on extremely compact cosmic objects, such as neutron stars and black holes. These objects provide excellent opportunities to probe extreme aspects of physics, such as strong gravity, high magnetic field, accretion-ejection mechanism, high-density degenerate matter, and gravitational waves, which cannot be studied in terrestrial laboratories. Prof. Bhattacharyya studies these objects primarily using X-ray satellite data and theoretical modelling. Prof. Bhattacharyya did his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, and was a Research Associate at the University of Maryland at College Park and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the USA, before joining a faculty position at TIFR in 2007. He received the NASA Space Science Achievement Award in 2007.

Prof. Bhattacharyya’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project aims to study the evolution of rapidly spinning neutron stars to probe their fundamental aspects. The project can be relevant for several Indian and U.S. observatories.

Shilpa Ashok Pandit

Shilpa Pandit is an Associate Professor, at the School of Arts and Sciences, Ahmedabad University, Gujarat. Dr. Pandit’s research has focused on immersive experiences of Indian art and aesthetics; how affect generates well-being from philosophical and lived perspectives. As part of her enquiry, Dr. Pandit has worked with music and dance students, teachers and performing communities in some Indian cities. Dr. Pandit’s search for elements of immersive well-being in Indian music theory and practice are part of her studentship in both psychology and music. At Ahmedabad University, she teaches social, developmental as well as positive psychology, having completed her education in psychology from Delhi university and the University of Madras.

In her other avatars, Shilpa has co-founded a Bengaluru based NGO—Dreampath Foundation that works with adolescents for career exploration and counseling; worked with NGOs in the domains of health, nutrition and livelihoods. She worked closely on rural employment, as a UNDP Research Officer at MoRD, from 2014-2016. She was also a Chevening CRISP scholar, studying at University of Oxford, UK in 2018.

Through the Fulbright fellowship, Dr. Pandit is working closely with domain experts in music and Indian philosophers of well-being, to generate new insights on the relationship between, self, affect, art/aesthetics and well-being.

Indranil Acharya

Dr Indranil Acharya is Professor of English at Vidyasagar University, West Bengal. He specializes in the documentation and translation of Bengali Dalit narratives on the tragic plight of Partition refugees and the victims of Bangladesh Liberation War (1971). Survival and Other Stories: Anthology of Bangla Dalit Stories (2012) and Listen to the Flames: Texts and Readings from the Margins (2016) are two major publications in this area. He has also researched on the documentation, translation and digital archiving of endangered languages and cultures of Eastern India. The Languages of West Bengal (2019) is a seminal publication in this field. Dr Acharya has led an indigenous literary movement in Eastern India through a multilingual publication titled Janajati Darpan (since 2017).

During his tenure as a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence scholar, Dr Acharya intends to expand the scope of his archival research on endangered folk performance traditions of Bengal- a project he had been working on since 2013. Through the translation of some critically endangered folk forms, he wants to explore the issue of graded inequality among the ex-untouchables. He would also attempt to trace the continuities of such dying traditions among the Dalit diaspora in the United States.

G.L. Samuel

Dr. G.L. Samuel is a distinguished Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, where he leads the Centre of Excellence for Advanced Laser Material Processing and Surface Engineering. He completed his PhD at IIT Madras in 2001 and pursued Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Kyungpook National University, South Korea, before joining the faculty at IIT Madras in 2005.

With expertise in Micro Manufacturing, Advanced Laser Material Processing, and Metrology, Dr. Samuel teaches a range of courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels including Automation in Manufacturing, Artificial Intelligence, Micro Manufacturing Technology, Machining and Metrology, as well as Modelling and Simulation.

Dr. Samuel has a strong publication record and holds patents in various areas of manufacturing. He has organized continuing education programmes, workshops, and international conferences, fostering academic development and collaborations with universities worldwide, including Texas A&M University.

As a part of the Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence fellowship, Dr. Samuel will conduct research at Texas A&M, focusing on developing digital twins for smart factory entities. The project aims to create a virtual representation that mimics the behaviour of the physical machines, enabling real-time monitoring, analysis, and optimization of all the processes in an autonomous factory.

Rahul Mangal

Dr. Rahul Mangal serves as an associate professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at IIT Kanpur. He completed his PhD in 2016 from Cornell University with Prof. Lynden Archer, where he worked on exploring the structural and dynamic characteristics of nano-particle polymer composites. After his Ph.D., Dr. Mangal did his postdoctoral research with Prof. Nicholas Abbott at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he explored how the anisotropic properties of liquid crystals influence the behavior of active colloids.

Dr. Mangal’s team at IIT Kanpur is conducting experimental investigations on a diverse range of problems associated with soft matter systems, polymers, and colloids. Their recent focus is on the synthesis and dynamics of artificial micro-swimmers in complex environments.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) fellowship at Cornell University, Ithaca, NJ, Dr. Mangal is investigating the synthesis of hybrid self-propulsion of Janus colloids and the rheological impact of active JCs on the viscoelastic medium. Through this project, Dr. Mangal will strive to facilitate the ongoing scientific endeavors in controlling the motion of artificial micro-swimmers in microscopic domains for their potential applications in cargo/ drug delivery, bio-diagnostics, and tuning material properties using active colloids as additives. Dr. Mangal is also set to teach a course on polymer physics at Cornell, aiming to foster a synergy between teaching and research.

Miriam Chandy Menacherry

Miriam Chandy Menacherry, filmmaker and founder of Filament Pictures, is known for her documentary films which celebrate everyday heroes, such as Stuntmen of Bollywood (2005), Robot Jockey (2007), The Rat Race (2011), Lyari Notes (2015), The Leopard’s Tribe (2022) and From the Shadows (2022). She was a Global Media Makers fellow (instituted by Film Independent) and a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) India fellow. She is also a masterclass panelist at IFFI on “Indian documentary on the World Stage”.

Miriam has completed her postgraduate degree from the AJK Mass Communication Research Center, New Delhi. Her social documentaries shed light on invisible narratives to construct a complex reality overlooked by mainstream media, and they have been selected at leading film festivals and broadcast worldwide. Her films have also been screened in educational institutes in India and abroad such as IIT Mumbai, Mount Carmel College, AJK Mass Communication Research Center, New York University, the University of Texas at Austin, Oxford University, and SOAS.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) fellowship at the University of Texas, Austin, TX, Miriam is engaging with students of film to develop a dialogue about critically important yet invisible stories from India and expand the scope of her research supported by the India Foundation for the Arts to visibilise the contribution of women in cinema to include parallel developments in Hollywood.

Souvik Chakraborty

Dr. Souvik Chakraborty is assistant professor at the Applied Mechanics Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He also holds a joint faculty position at the Yardi School of Artificial Intelligence. His research interest is at the intersection of scientific computing and machine learning, with a focus on developing scalable, interpretable, and trustworthy machine learning algorithms for solving scientific and engineering problems. He is a recipient of the prestigious INAE Young Engineers Award.

Dr. Chakraborty joined IIT Delhi in 2020. Prior to that, he spent two years at the University of Notre Dame. He also spent some time at the University of British Columbia as a postdoctoral researcher. He obtained his PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) fellowship, Dr. Chakraborty will do a combination of both research with teaching. He is developing novel algorithms and frameworks for seamless fusion of data and physics. It is expected that the developed algorithm will address challenges such as out-of-distribution generalization and interpretability and will be a step towards realizing the dream of digital twins for infrastructural systems. Dr. Chakraborty is also teaching a course on operator learning, with the goal of developing synergy between teaching and research.

Sumeet Anand

Dr. Sumeet Anand is a performing vocalist of the extant form of Hindustani classical music, Dhrupad. He is also a methodical teacher and a meticulous researcher, a distinguishing combination. He received early training from his grandfathers (including noted vocalist Pandit Siyaram Tiwari) and advanced his skills under the tutelage of Pandit Abhay Narayan Mallick of Darbhanga-Mallick Dhrupad tradition.

A familiar name in major music festivals across India, Dr. Anand also broadcasts from AIR, Delhi. He is an empaneled performer with ICCR and has toured extensively across Europe. He has delivered lecture-demonstrations at UCLA, NID Haryana, NSD, and IHC New Delhi. He received fellowships from the Government of India and the Government of Delhi, and completed his research on Dhrupad, it’s evolutionary history and pedagogical shifts.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (Research and Teaching) fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles, CA, Dr. Anand is sharing the theoretical and practical aspects of Hindustani classical Dhrupad with his students. The fellowship will enable him to be a part of a truly global music community chance, and get introduced to music genres like jazz, western classical, African, Thai, and Turkish music traditions which will be an enriching experience for his artistic development. He will also be undertaking minor research under Prof. Anna Morcom on the evolving performance repertoire of Dhrupad.