Other Fulbright Grants India: Fulbright-Kalam Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence (Research)

Venugopal Vuruputur

Dr. Venugopal Vuruputur is presently a faculty member in the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (CAOS), Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He has an M.S. and Ph.D. from University of Minnesota and a B.Tech. from IIT Madras, all in Civil Engineering (with specialization in Hydrology). Since joining CAOS, Dr. Vuruputur and his students have focused on characterizing the multiscale space-time structure of tropical rainfall and its variability. More recently, he has also been exploring hydrology-oriented problems, including estimation and simulation of surface and subsurface storage and their variability in the Ganges-Brahmaputra River system, coupled with analyzing geochemical markers upstream of the river to better characterize and understand landslide-triggered flash floods. He was an Associate Editor of Water Resources Research during the period 2013-2017 and has been on the review editorial board of Frontiers in Atmospheric Sciences since 2015. He has also been a member of national and regional committees related to cloud seeding experiments in India, and water resources management.

During his stint as a Fulbright-Kalam fellow at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in collaboration with Prof. Jin-Yi Yu of the Department of Earth Science, Dr. Vuruputur proposes to identify and robustly characterize pathways from the midlatitudes that can potentially modulate the sub seasonal variability of the Indian monsoon, especially in the early and late phases of the season.

Vikram Vishal

Dr. Vikram Vishal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences and an associate faculty in the Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai. He leads the ‘Computational and Experimental Geomechanics’ group at IIT Bombay. Dr. Vishal worked at IIT Roorkee over 2013-16, during which he pursued the Fulbright-Nehru postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Dr. Vishal also serves as the Convener of the DST-sponsored ‘National Centre of Excellence in Carbon Capture and Utilization’ at IIT Bombay. He is a recipient of two national awards and holds the young scientist recognition from all major science academies in India. He is currently a member of the Indian National Young Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Vishal’s research interests are in the domains of geomechanics, carbon capture and sequestration, enhanced petroleum recovery and unconventional hydrocarbon systems.

During his Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship at MIT, he aims to develop an integrated risk assessment framework using experimentally validated simulations for CO2 storage in a mature oilfield in India. This research work will build on evaluating the storage readiness of specific fields in an onshore sedimentary basin. Detailed understanding of the barriers and their elimination will be key to successful deployment of carbon capture and storage in India, and advance their readiness levels.

Syed Umer Latief

Dr. Syed Umer Latief is an assistant professor of geography in the Higher Education Department, Government of Jammu and Kashmir. He obtained his MSc in geography from the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and PhD from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. His doctoral research focused on analyzing the impact of climate change on the Kolahoi glacier in the Kashmir Valley. During his PhD, he was awarded a travel grant by the International Council for Science to attend the ISMASS workshop in Portland, Oregon which was jointly organized by SCAR, Cambridge, England, and the IASC Secretariat, Potsdam, Germany. In 2015, he joined Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi as a post-doctoral research associate, where he worked on the glaciers of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.

Dr. Umer’s research interests include glaciology, geomorphology, remote sensing, climate change and paleo-climate. He has published many research articles and book chapters on glaciers and climate change.

During his Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence, Dr. Umer is investigating climatic variability and glacial dynamics in the upper Liddar Valley in the geological past, as well as in the future. He will use detailed field stratigraphy aided by OSL and CRN chronology of erosional and depositional features to ascertain the timing, magnitude and pattern of glaciations during the late Quaternary period.

Manabendra Saharia

Dr. Manabendra Saharia is an assistant professor in the Department of Civil Engineering, at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. He obtained his PhD in water resources engineering from the University of Oklahoma.

Dr. Saharia has received young scientist awards from the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI) and the International Society for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (ISEES). Before joining IIT Delhi, Dr. Saharia worked in the hydrology labs of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His primary expertise is in developing techniques and systems for monitoring and mitigating natural hazards such as floods and landslides, with a special focus on the worst-affected regions of the world. His research seeks to disentangle the complex relationships between geomorphology, climate, precipitation, and runoff generation using physics-based and data-driven models.

During his Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence, Dr. Saharia is studying how one can incorporate reservoir models into land data assimilation systems for better assessment of climate change impacts. This includes incorporation or satellite and ground-based observations of reservoir water levels using a multi-source reservoir operation scheme. The goal is to quantify the impact of reservoirs on water storage, floods, and droughts, and also, to assess how reservoirs are responding to ongoing climate change and what measures would be required in the future

Amiya Kumar Sahoo

Dr. Amiya Kumar Sahoo is a senior scientist at ICAR-Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute, Barrackpore, West Bengal. He obtained his PhD in aquaculture, specialising in fish health, from the Karnataka Veterinary, Animal and Fisheries Science University in 2011. He has been instrumental in Fish and River Health linking with National Mission Programmes including the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), and the National Surveillance Programme on Aquatic Animal Diseases (NSPAAD). Dr. Sahoo is principal investigator of a multidisciplinary project on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) in fisheries and aquaculture under the technical guidance of FAO, which is a first of its kind in India with a national identity of Indian Network on Fisheries and Animal Antimicrobial Resistance (INFAAR).

Dr. Sahoo is a member of Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of River Valley Projects of MoEFCC since 2016. He is guest editor of Environmental Science and Pollution Research and Frontiers of Marine Science, and editor-in-chief of the Journal of Inland Fisheries Society of India.

During his Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence, Dr. Sahoo is investigating on the epidemiological tools for surveillance and effective strategies towards combating AMR in fisheries and aquaculture, an integral part of One Health.

Poulomi Ganguli

Dr. Poulomi Ganguli is an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Her research focuses on modeling and predicting natural hazards in a multivariate context, which can help credible assessment of the risk of extreme events, especially droughts, low flows and floods, and compound weather and climate extremes in hydrology. Dr. Ganguli has received several awards, such as the Alexander von Humboldt fellowship for early career scientist, the Women Involvement in Science and Engineering Research (WISER) grant by the Indo-German Science and Technology Centre, the best PhD thesis award in civil engineering for the 2012-2013 academic year at IIT Bombay, and University gold medals for undergraduate studies. She is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers’ (ASCE) task committee on compound flooding.

During her Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence, Dr. Ganguli is developing a probabilistic coastal compound flood hazard assessment model for low-latitude areas. She will identify and contrast compound hazard potentials of tropical cyclone-heatwave events across eastern and western coastal plains of India in the present day and projected climate scenarios, quantify the associated projected uncertainty, and identify vulnerable regions.

Kasturi Das

Dr. Kasturi Das is professor of economics at IMT Ghaziabad (IMTG). She has held multiple advisory positions in India and globally in the field of trade and the environment including the World Economic Forum’s expert group on Trade and Climate Change, and the Government of India’s high-level advisory committee on Trade and the Environment. As a member of Climate Strategies, London, Prof. Das co-led multiple research projects on trade-climate interface. A PhD in Economics from the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning (CESP), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, Prof. Das has published extensively in the field of trade and climate change in leading scholarly journals including Nature, the American Journal of International Law, the Annual Review of Environment and Resources, and Global Environmental Change. She has delivered numerous talks and lectures, and has consulted with multiple institutions across geographies including Oxford Martin School, Tufts University, and the United Nations. In 2019, Prof. Das was hosted by the University of Oxford as a Chevening Research, Science, and Innovation Leadership (CRISP) fellow. Earlier in 2007, she visited the University of Cambridge as a Ford fellow. In 2011, she went to the University of East Anglia as the ESRC’s Governance of Clean Development visiting fellow. At IMTG, as the founding head of the I’M The Change initiative on Sustainability and Social Responsibility (SSR) since 2016, Prof. Das conceptualized and developed an innovative, service-learning course for MBA students. In its seventh year, this course has touched the lives of thousands of peoples belonging to under-served communities. Under her leadership, the I’M The Change initiative won the ‘Innovations that Inspire Challenge 2018’ of AACSB International.

During her Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence at Yale University, CT, Prof. Das is exploring the role of the global trading system in supporting industrial decarbonization and just transition in hard-to-abate sectors in developing countries, with a particular focus on the steel industry in India.

Ruchi Agrawal

Dr. Ruchi Agrawal is working as an associate fellow in the Sustainable Agriculture Division, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), Gurugram. She is affiliated with Deakin University, Australia, and TERI-SAS University, New Delhi, as adjunct faculty. She has 15 years of R&D experience in nature-based solutions and sustainable agriculture research. She has expertise in developing sustainable agri-input nanoproducts, biopolymers, and green-biochemicals using biomass in an Integrated Biorefinery Platform. She has been honored with the prestigious ‘Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research’ (INSPIRE) fellowship, and the ‘Young Scientist Governor Award’ by the Government of India. She is a distinguished visiting fellow at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), the University of Tennessee, and the ÅboAkademi University in Finland. She has demonstrated an impressive publication record with 15 patents in the U.S., Europe, and Australia, and 65 research articles in international journals. She serves as an editorial board member of high impact journals and is recognized as a coveted speaker in international forums.

During her Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship for Academic and Professional Excellence, Dr. Agarwal is developing high-value bioproducts to demonstrate novel approaches to meet Net-Zero targets set for India and combat climate change issues. This project will develop a novel single-pot process to valorize biorefinery-waste-lignin & produce jet-fuel by rapid catalytic hydrodeoxygenation driven by synergistic Lewis acids and metal catalysts. The process will be optimized for catalyst concentration, temperature, and time. Selected agents will be investigated to inhibit side reactions, thereby improving yields. Finally, life cycle and techno-economic analysis will be done to assess environmental and economic sustainability. This study will serve the dual purpose of reducing carbon emissions and developing carbon-negative jet-fuel.