Other Fulbright Grants USA: Fulbright Global Scholar Award

Weidong Zhang

Dr. Weidong Zhang is a professor in the Department of Global Studies and World Languages at Winona State University, Minnesota. He holds a doctorate in mass communications (with a cultural studies focus on media, culture, and society), and an MA in Asian studies/Asian civilizations, both from the University of Iowa. He was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany, during 2014–2015. His research interests lie at the intersection of language and discourse, culture, and Chinese society. He has published in the International Journal of China Studies, the American Review of China Studies, the Journal of Asian Communication Research, and the Network and Communications Journal, among others. One important line of his work focuses on China’s role in the world, including China’s self-perception and its evolving foreign policy and the foreign policy discourse it has with the new world order and the Global South.

Dr. Zhang’s Fulbright project is part of a multi-country research aiming to provide a comprehensive yet nuanced analysis of China’s engagement with diverse regions within the Global South. Using case studies and fieldwork in India, Brazil, and South Africa, the project is investigating China’s diverse strategies in foreign policy, economic investments, and diplomatic initiatives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It is also assessing how nations in the Global South perceive and respond to China’s influence, highlighting regional variations in these interactions. This research addresses a critical gap in the understanding of China’s role in the Global South, a region that has often been overlooked in mainstream analyses of China’s foreign policy. By exploring the intersection of China’s strategic interests and the diverse priorities of the Global South nations, the study is attempting to offer a deeper understanding of how these evolving relationships are shaping global power dynamics, regional development, and geopolitical alignments. Additionally, it is examining the broader implications for global governance, peace, and security, to provide insights into the future of international relations and China’s role in the evolving global order.

Jared Mazzanti

Mr. Jared Mazzanti currently serves as the director of Strategic Initiatives in the Dean’s Office at the University of California (UC), Berkeley School of Public Health, where he has designed and operationalized multiple programs focused on health innovation internationally and domestically. He spearheads a novel partnership with J.P. Morgan that brought a new healthcare conference to Asia, oversees a Health Innovation Accelerator for Taiwanese start-ups, and previously built a Social Impact Innovation Grant Program to provide student teams resources and training to effect positive change in their communities.

A Boren scholarship to China in 2009 ignited Mr. Mazzanti’s lifelong drive to build bridges between peoples and cultures, especially in Asia. He has launched and sustained multi-country partnerships in his previous roles at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, UC Berkeley’s Office of the Chancellor, and the HNA Group in China.

Mr. Mazzanti received his BA in political economy with the distinction of magna cum laude from UC, where he concentrated in East Asia and minored in Chinese. He received his MBA in 2016 after completing a Chinese-taught program at Central South University (中南大学) in China’s Hunan province. He is an active member of UC Berkeley’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Council, regularly volunteers for the Asia Society of Northern California, and maintains professional credentials in HR and project management.

Mr. Mazzanti’s Fulbright project is conducting a comparative analysis on how universities in India (Indian Institute of Science), Japan (Tohoku University), and South Korea (Seoul National University) are bridging the gap between invention and innovation, especially in health-related deep tech; this is to identify success stories and pain points, the latter preventing faster uptake of university research by industry. His research aims to answer one key question through surveys and stakeholder interviews: what factors best position a university to integrate into local and national innovation ecosystems and drive entrepreneurship among its faculty, students, staff, and alumni?

Kristian Dambrino

Dr. Kristian Dambrino is an ANCC board-certified psychiatric nurse practitioner and founder of Dambrino Wellness, an evidence-based outpatient mental health clinic in Nashville, Tennessee. During her Doctor of Nursing Practice program, she studied the impact of high-deductible health insurance on mental health treatment through a retrospective analysis, exploring how cost transparency between the provider and patient can mitigate financial decision-making for patients accessing psychiatric care.

As a national speaker and psychopharmacology expert, Dr. Dambrino regularly delivers continuing medical education programs for Psych Congress, HMP Global, and conferences across the United States. Her academic contributions include authoring accredited graduate nursing courses in psychopharmacology, guest lecturing at Vanderbilt University, and holding adjunct appointments at Michigan State University and Marian University.

Dr. Dambrino is the creator of The Limbic Music, an R&B musical about neurotransmitters in mental health, which is currently in pre-production. She has also authored a masterclass in jazz vocal improvisation, delivering the six-hour curriculum completely in French in Caen, France, in May 2023. An accomplished vocalist, she performs at annual jazz concerts in France and has shared stages with Oprah Winfrey, Morgan Freeman, Jean Smart, Samuel L. Jackson, and Ray Romano. She has also been featured on U.S. national television – MSNBC, CNBC, and CMT – as an entertainer, and has released three original jazz albums, one of which was awarded the 2017 Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Award for Best Contemporary Music Composition.

Committed to service, Dr. Dambrino volunteers regularly with Rotary International, Project C.U.R.E., Habitat for Humanity, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and the Nashville International Center for Empowerment. Recently, she produced a sold-out benefit concert, Music City Without Borders, raising $20,000 for refugee resettlement in Tennessee.

Dr. Dambrino’ s Fulbright-project is working on reducing mental health stigma among nurses and nursing students in Indonesia and India through a photovoice-enhanced intervention. Via participatory photography and workshops, the project participants are documenting and reflecting on their experiences with stigma. The goal is to strengthen mental health nursing capacity by building sustainable global partnerships.

Karl Krup

Dr. Karl Krupp, MSc, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Practice, Policy, and Translational Research in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona, Phoenix. He has been involved in implementation of public health interventions and research among at-risk disadvantaged communities in the U.S. and India since 2002. His earliest work focused on childhood asthma among African Americans living in public housing in Bayview– Hunters Point, San Francisco, and farmworkers in Central Valley, California. For the last 18 years, he has been working in India on the social determinants of health among rural and slum-dwelling populations. His research on HIV prevention, maternal health, primary and secondary prevention of cervical cancer, mental health, vaccine hesitancy, cardiovascular disease, and aging has been documented in more than 84 peer-reviewed publications like MMWR, AIDS, BMJ, Vaccine, International Journal of Cardiology, and Journal of Medical Microbiology.

Dr. Krupp holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Minnesota, a master’s degree in public health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine at London University, and a PhD in public health from Florida International University in Miami. His dissertation research was titled “Prevalence and Correlates of Coronary Heart Disease in Slum-Dwelling South Indian Women”. The research was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and the Fogarty International Center through a Global Health Equity Scholar Fellowship. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in January 2020, Dr. Krupp has been working on the psychological antecedents of COVID-19 vaccine intentions among adults in Arizona, the validation of microRNA panels for detection of breast cancer and cervical cancer in blood, and on the interventions to reduce symptoms of dementia in mildly cognitively impaired older adults.

By 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will reside in cities where more than one in 10 residents are elderly. The WHO has called for age-friendly cities where older people can “age actively” with security, good health, and full social participation. Dr. Krupp’s Fulbright study is using mixed methods for a policy analysis to examine aging programs, built environment, and policies in Mysuru, India, and Stockholm, Sweden. The research is gathering data from key stakeholders, including city planners, service providers, and civil society leaders.