Meet Our India Fulbrighters Archive - Page 8 of 42

Amal Vijay

Mr. Amal Vijay is pursuing his Ph.D. from the Computational Chemistry and Biophysics group, Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune. His current area of research focuses on studying the mechanism of various biomolecular recognition processes, specifically protein-drug and protein-protein interactions and secondary interactions in nucleotides using advanced molecular dynamics simulation techniques.

He completed his bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the Loyola College, Chennai, India, and his master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Hyderabad, Hyderabad. He is a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) awarded by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). He is honored by the Rashtrapati Scout award, an award presented by the President of India for his achievement in scouting.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, Vijay is interested in understanding the scope of “RNA breathing” in RNA – protein recognition process using molecular dynamics simulation methods aided by enhanced sampling techniques in computational chemistry. The proposed study project can provide a significant impact on the role of RNA-based drug design for the cure of various diseases.

Vaishali Thakkur

Ms. Vaishali Thakkur is a Ph.D. scholar at Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IITK), Uttar Pradesh. Her research focuses on modelling enzymatic reactions using density functional based on the quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) technique. As a part of her doctoral thesis, she works with the QM/MM method, along with various enhanced sampling techniques, to study the underlying mechanism for antibiotic resistance. She is also interested in identifying and addressing the bottleneck in these calculations to make them more efficient. Apart from science, she enjoys spending her time learning new languages and playing with her color palette.

Prior to joining IITK as a research scholar, she completed her bachelor’s and master’s in Chemistry from Delhi University and Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IITD), respectively. She has been a recipient of the merit cum means scholarship for her performance at IITD. She also has a year-long experience of working as an online educator and content reviewer at Chegg India Pvt. Ltd.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, she will work with experts to understand and implement a new electrostatic embedding scheme in the existing QM/MM framework. The aim is to develop a model that is accurate and affordable at the same time. The introduction of such a method would be beneficial for people modelling reactions in complex biological systems, where the computation of these electrostatic interactions proves to be time consuming.

Makepeace Sitlhou

Makepeace Sitlhou is an independent journalist, who has been working in the media and communications field for over a decade in India. Makepeace has been covering India’s Northeast for several leading news publications like Vox, The Baffler, The Daily Beast, Nikkei Asia, The British Medical Journal, Vogue Business, Middle East Eye, Foreign Policy, The Juggernaut, Asia Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Fair Observer, Popula, BBC, Vice World News, Sojourners, and TRT World.

Her freelance work has been widely recognized by awards in national and international forums. More recently, she was jointly awarded the prestigious Red Ink Award by the Mumbai Press Club in the Lifestyle category for a story she wrote for CNN International.

In 2017, she received the UNFPA sponsored Laadli Media award for gender sensitivity for her coverage of tribal women’s protest in Manipur for The Ladies Finger. Her story on Black rice in Manipur published in Popula won the South Asian Journalism Association Award in the Business category in 2019. In 2020, she received the National Media Award for her coverage of coal mining in Meghalaya post the National Green Tribunal ban.

Her work has been supported by organizations like Google News Initiative, Center for Financial Accountability, National Foundation for India, Zubaan Books in collaboration with Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Humsafar Trust, and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Makepeace completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Psychology from the University of Delhi. She has previously worked with leading civil society organizations like Amnesty International and Breakthrough India and as a staff writer with The Alternative (Sattva Media) and The Print.

As a Humphrey fellow, she wishes to learn in-depth about the US immigration laws and policy, and their implementation along the US-Mexico border. She’d like to study the parallels between the Indian and American immigration systems from the angles of national security, human rights, bureaucracy and citizen-centric politics.

Ajeetha Begum Sulthan

Ajeetha is an IPS Officer, 2008 Batch, born into the Kerala Cadre. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and Business Management and a Master’s degree in Political Science with a specialization in Gandhian studies. While training at the National Police Academy, she was adjudged the Best Lady Athlete and the Best Lady Outdoor Probationer of the batch.

She has worked as the Assistant Superintendent of Police Reasi and Additional Superintendent of Police Ramban in Jammu and Kashmir following which she was transferred to Kerala. In Kerala, she worked as the Superintendent of Police of Internal Security Investigation Team, CBCID, District Police Chief (Thrissur rural), Deputy Commissioner of Police (Trivandrum City), District Police Chief (Wayanad), Principal of Police Training College, District Police Chief (Kollam rural) and District Police Chief and Commissioner of Police (Kollam city). She is currently working as the Assistant Director in SVP National Police Academy. She has represented India at the UNODC conference in Vienna, Austria ( 2019) and made a presentation on Gender mainstreaming in the police.

The officer has been awarded the Kalinga Fellowship in recognition of her work in combating gender-based violence and the trafficking of women and children. She is a triathlete and has also stood first in Full marathon Open category Women’s – Hyderabad Airtel Marathon 2021.

As a Humphrey Fellow, she wishes to learn more about practical strategies to address the issue of prevention of crimes against children and also will improve institutional response to child victims of sexual assault by studying international best practices, policy frameworks, initiatives carried out by various public authorities, and develop a roadmap which includes multi-agency coordination to tackle this problem.

Anjana Thampi

Dr. Anjana Thampi is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Jindal Global Law School, O. P. Jindal Global University, Sonipat, Haryana. She received her BA (Hons.) from the University of Delhi in 2009, and MA from the University of Hyderabad in 2011. She completed her MPhil in 2014 and PhD in 2019 from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, under the supervision of Prof. Jayati Ghosh. Her doctoral thesis explored the impact of two food provisioning programmes on child nutrition and inequality in India. She was awarded the UGC Junior Research Fellowship in 2013.

Her areas of research include food security and nutrition, climate and sustainability, inequality, gender, and labour. She has published journal articles and book chapters and contributes opinion pieces on contemporary issues. She has also presented her work at national and international workshops and conferences.

Dr. Thampi’s postdoctoral project, supported by the Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, would assess the potential of a strengthened employment guarantee programme to address the climate and livelihoods crises in India. The study would estimate the green jobs created through a universal employment guarantee in India, its budgetary requirement, and suggest ways to finance it. The global Green New Deal, green job guarantee proposals in the United States, and international experiences of job guarantee would be compared with the experiences of the rural job guarantee in India. This project would have policy implications for India and the global project to address the climate crisis.

Gopal Murali

Dr. Gopal Murali’s research interest spans many areas in ecology and evolution pertaining to biological diversity at various scales and organizations. He obtained his PhD in 2020 from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. His doctoral research focused on understanding the ecological and evolutionary mechanisms underlying defensive animal colourations and has published several research articles in reputed, peer-reviewed international journals. After his PhD, Dr. Murali was awarded the PBC postdoctoral fellowship for outstanding Chinese and Indian postdoctoral fellows by the Council for Higher Education, Israel (2020). His current work at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, applies macroecological and macroevolutionary perspectives to characterize processes that underlie various broad-scale biodiversity patterns, and to predict how biodiversity will shift in response to recent environmental change.

Climate change poses a major threat to biodiversity, and there is an urgent need to forecast the effects of climate change on species persistence to inform conservation. During his Fulbright-Nehru postdoctoral research fellowship, in collaboration with Prof. John J. Wiens, Dr. Murali aims to utilize data from recent species’ responses to climate change to incorporate the adaptive capacity of species in climate change vulnerability assessments.

Arpita Dalal

Dr. Arpita Dalal obtained her B.Sc degree from Birjhora Mahavidyalaya, Gauhati University, in 2010 and her master’s degree from the Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Assam University, in 2012. She then received her PhD in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Susmita Gupta at Assam University-. Her research work focuses on biomonitoring and ecology of freshwater ecosystems using aquatic insects and use of predatory macroinvertebrates (such as aquatic insects and crustaceans) as biocontrol agents of mosquito populations. Dr. Dalal has published several research articles in reputable international and national journals. She was awarded the DST-INSPIRE Fellowship (2013) and has qualified in the CBSE-UGC NET examination (2014). Her other scientific recognitions include JSPS HOPE Fellow awarded at 8th HOPE Meeting with Nobel Laureates, Japan (2016); selection for Newton-Bhabha PhD placement programme, hosted by Queen’s University, UK for six months, sponsored by British Council, UK and DBT, India (2016). She was also selected from India to participate in the BRICS Young Scientist Forum Conclave, Russia (2020).

Aedes aegypti mosquito is a carrier of deadly diseases worldwide include dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya. Recently, they invaded the Great Plains of USA, expanding their range. Factors of their invasion and expansion must be identified to prevent further expansion. To address this issue in her postdoctoral stint supported by the Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, Dr. Dalal is designing feeding experiments under different climatic and abiotic factors coupled with field works to identify the reasons behind the A. aegypti invasion and sustenance in a new area.

Manashita Borah

Dr. Manashita Borah, is as an Assistant Professor (Senior Grade) in the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE), Tezpur University, Assam, India since 2016. She obtained her PhD from Department of EE, NIT Silchar. Dr Borah is the recipient of the Young Scientist Award, conferred by DST, Government of Assam in the State Awards Ceremony for Scientific Excellence in 2019, the Young Engineer’s Award by Senior Engineers Forum, Institution of Engineers in 2018 and two IEEE best paper awards. Additionally, she also received the Distinguished Anundoram Borooah Merit Award from the Government of Assam and Oil India Limited.

Dr Borah leads the Control System Design and Simulation Laboratory in the Department of EE at Tezpur University, where her research group is focusing on designing fractional-order controllers, IoT enabled renewable energy systems, among others.

Her Fulbright-Kalam project aims to address two open problems faced globally: shortcomings of existing energy infrastructure and climate sustainable energy storage by capitalizing on green energy sources. She will be working on designing a smart hybrid storage system to deliver an improved, sustainable, resilient, safe, and efficient green energy storage infrastructure. It will address the serious implications of climate change faced in her home state of Assam, such as heavy floods due to the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, soil erosion and landslides that cause power outage for several days.

Apart from being conferred with prestigious awards and having publications in reputed journals, she has been actively associated with various departmental, academic and co-curricular activities of the university, such as dance, drama, and yoga. She has been trained in the Indian classical dance forms of Bharatnatyam and Shattriya for twelve years.

Shreya Shrikant Katre

Shreya Katre is a PhD candidate at the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, where she works with Dr. Archana M Nair and Dr. Ravi K. She graduated from Walchand College of Engineering Sangli, Maharashtra, with a Bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering and a Master’s degree in Earth System Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. Her current research focuses on the geological carbon sequestration in selected rock formations of India. The goal of her research is to estimate the carbon storage potential of Indian basins and to identify novel carbon storage pathways using various geophysical and geochemical techniques.

Throughout her career, Shreya has participated in many social activities, workshops, technical quizzes, and was rewarded on various occasions. She has also worked as a bridge designer on a Metro rail project while working at STUP consultants Pvt. Ltd. She has presented her research at many national and international conferences through travel grants and has published in peer-reviewed journal and book chapters. Apart from this, Shreya is a Marathi language writer and poet and takes a special interest in Indian classical music.

As a Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellow, her primary objective is to contribute to the science of carbon mineralization in ultramafic and basaltic rocks which paves a path to its applications in carbon management technologies. She will study the kinetics of carbonation and enhanced carbonation techniques to provide insights to the geochemistry of CO2-water-rock interactions. The application of this technology extends to in-situ carbon dioxide storage and ex-situ carbon dioxide removal methods.