Fulbright-Kalam Fellowship Archives

Alan Fryar

Dr. Alan Fryar received his BS in Geology and History from Duke University in 1984, his MS in Geology from Texas A&M University in 1986, and his PhD in Geology from the University of Alberta (Canada) in 1992. From 1992 to 1995, he was a Research Associate in the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 1995, he has been a faculty member in the Department of Geological Sciences (now Earth and Environmental Sciences) at the University of Kentucky, where he is currently a Professor. He teaches courses in hydrology, hydrogeology, and environmental geology. He has graduated eight PhD and 17 MS advisees.

His current and recent research projects include groundwater flow and chemistry in karst regions of Morocco and China; occurrence of arsenic in floodplains of the Ganges and Mekong rivers; transport of bacteria in karst aquifers in Kentucky; and groundwater-stream interactions in major river valleys in Kentucky. Dr. Fryar was the principal investigator for two projects, funded by the US Department of State, to build capacity for graduate education in hydrology in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, and Indonesia. He has also received grants from the National Science Foundation, the US Department of Energy, the US Geological Survey, and the state of Kentucky. He has authored or co-authored 64 papers in international scientific journals, 13 conference papers, four book chapters, six book reviews, and essays in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Earth Magazine, and International Educator.

Dr. Fryar is a fellow of the Geological Society of America (GSA) and past chair of its hydrogeology division. He is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the International Association of GeoChemistry, the International Association of Hydrogeologists (IAH), and the National Ground Water Association. He is book review editor of the journal Groundwater and former co-editor of the journal Environmental & Engineering Geoscience. He was a Fulbright Specialist to Pakistan (December 2009–January 2010) and India (February-March 2017) and a Fulbright Scholar to Morocco (January-May 2014). He received the International Service Award from the IAH US National Chapter and the GSA Hydrogeology Division Distinguished Service Award.

Studies of how climate change affects water resources in India have emphasized changes in monsoon rainfall and stream flow. The sensitivity of springs, which are important water sources in rural mountainous areas of northern India, to climate and land use/cover changes has received less attention. Dr. Fryar’s Fulbright-Kalam project proposes to study how karst (limestone) springs on the Shillong Plateau respond to rainfall. He intends to review existing data and reports; select springs for sampling; deploy sensors that record water level, temperature, and chemistry for at least one year; and identify timing and sources of recharge. These activities will be coordinated with local stakeholders.

Ravindra Duddu

Originally from India, Dr. Ravindra Duddu got his BTech in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Subsequently, he obtained his MS and PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Northwestern University. After that he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Geophysics and Columbia University in the City of New York. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University, with secondary appointments in Mechanical Engineering and Earth and Environmental Sciences.

Dr. Duddu’s research interests and work experience are in the area of computational solid mechanics with an emphasis on fracture mechanics and multi-physics modeling of material damage evolution. His research is interdisciplinary and spans the disciplines of engineering mechanics, earth and environmental sciences, applied mathematics, and scientific computing. Specific application interests include: fracture of glaciers ice and ice shelves, delamination of fiber reinforced composites, and corrosion/fracture of metal alloys. He is an author on 35 peer-reviewed journal articles with more than 1000 citations, and has a h-index of 16. He has generated more than $1.5 million in grants from federal agencies and industry, and has mentored several post doctorate, graduate and undergraduate students in his research group.

Dr. Duddu is a recipient of the US National Science Foundation CAREER award and the Royal Society International Exchanges travel award. He also received the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellowship at Vanderbilt University and the US Office of Naval Research Summer Faculty Fellowship. He is a member of ASCE Engineering Mechanics Institute, American Geophysical Union, and United States Association for Computational Mechanics.

The goal of Dr. Duddu’s Fulbright-Kalam project is to expand and strengthen collaborations between his research group at Vanderbilt University and the faculty and students of the Center of Excellence (CoE) on Subsurface Mechanics at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM). The project’s research aim is to develop state-of-the-art computationally efficient schemes for solving fracture mechanics problems encountered in Earth, Environmental and Energy Sciences, through a combination of teaching (seminars and short-courses) and research activities (involving PhD students) at the CoE. These schemes will be tailored to study the plausible mechanisms triggering ice-rock avalanches and identify the vulnerabilities of Himalayan glaciers.

Jerry Anthony

Dr. Jerry Anthony, PhD, FAICP, is a global changemaker. Anthony has a bachelor’s degree in Architecture, a master’s degree in Town Planning, and a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning. He is a tenured faculty member at the School of Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Iowa, a Carnegie-1 and AAU institution in the US

Dr. Anthony teaches courses in Sustainable Development, Housing Policy, Land Use Planning, Urban Growth Management, and International Planning. He has been named an Excellent Educator by the American Planning Association. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the Chinese University of Hong Kong from 2015-2019. He has won numerous teaching awards at the University of Iowa. Students consistently rate his courses very highly, regard him as an outstanding teacher, and describe his classes to be life-transforming.

Dr. Anthony’s research interests are in housing policy and land use planning in the US and international contexts. His current research projects include a) the effects of high housing costs on economic growth in the largest U.S. cities, b) the rebuilding of the American city of Cedar Rapids after a devasting flood, c) methods to increase the replacement of traditional wood-burning cookstoves (chulhas) in India, and d) climate change responsive urbanism in India. He was named a HUD Urban Scholar in 2002. His publications are widely read, with a 2004 paper titled “The Effects of Florida’s Growth Management Act on Housing Affordability” named one of the top 10 most influential papers published in the Journal of the American Planning Association in 25 years. His research has been funded by numerous entities, including the Brookings Institution, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, and the US Department of Housing & Urban Development.

In 2003, he co-founded the Housing Trust Fund of Johnson County that to date has distributed about $12 million to help build over 900 reasonably-priced homes in Iowa. In 2019, Dr. Anthony was given the University of Iowa’s Michael J. Brody award for Excellence in Service.

In 2020, Dr. Anthony was named a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners – the highest honor for urban planners in the U.S.

Cities are significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. Fortunately, cities are better resourced financially than rural areas, bring together people with varied skills and are crucibles for innovation. These advantages could be combined to facilitate sustainable urbanism. Many scholars believe that the war to stave off catastrophic climate change will be won or lost in cities. Much of the world’s urban population lives in the global South, where cities are expanding rapidly. Modifying the development patterns of these cities while they are growing affords significant opportunities for a sustainable future for humankind. Dr. Anthony, in his Fulbright-Kalam project, plans to document the climate change mitigating efforts of several Indian cities, assessing their effectiveness, and exploring their transferability to cities in other countries.

Sandip Mazumder

Dr. Sandip Mazumder is professor and associate chair of mechanical and aerospace engineering at The Ohio State University (OSU). He joined OSU in March 2004. Prior to OSU, he was employed at the CFD Research Corporation in Huntsville, AL, for seven years. He is one of the architects and early developers of the commercial code, CFD-ACE+™. His research is computational in nature and spans three main areas: computational fluid dynamics and heat transfer emphasizing on chemical reactions, with applications in combustion, catalytic conversion, fuel cells, batteries, and chemical vapor deposition; thermal radiation and its applications; and non-equilibrium transport phenomena as occurring in nanoscale systems. He has been active in raising awareness about global warming and climate change among engineering students and the general public through his classroom teaching and seminars. Dr. Mazumder is the author of two graduate-level textbooks, more than 65 journal papers, and over 65 peer-reviewed conference publications. He is the recipient of the McCarthy Engineering Teaching Award and the Lumley Research Award from the OSU College of Engineering. He has also been a fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers since 2011.

In light of the fact that the U.S. and India are ranked second and third, respectively, among the highest carbon dioxide-producing nations, Dr. Mazumder’s Fulbright-Kalam project involves a collaborative one-semester part-teaching, part-research stint at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. For this, he is creating and deploying two modules with the objective of increasing awareness about global warming and its causes among the future engineering workforce in both the countries. While the teaching module has a short ambit, the research module, titled “Hierarchical Models for Atmospheric Solar Radiation Transport and Earth’s Temperature Predictions”, is attempting to answer long-standing questions on the impact of greenhouse gases on global warming.

Joshua Rosenthal

Dr. Joshua Rosenthal is a senior scientist at the Fogarty International Center of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). He is an ecologist with a long-standing interest in the integration of public health, environment, and international development. Dr. Rosenthal completed his PhD and postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. He completed an AAAS Science and Diplomacy Fellowship at the NIH, was a Senior Fulbright Fellow at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and has been awarded three NIH Director’s Awards for work across the agency in support of public health and environment. Dr. Rosenthal has developed and led numerous programs at the NIH in environment and health research, as well as in capacity building in low- and middle-income countries, including the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups; the International Training and Research in Environmental and Occupational Health; Ecology of Infectious Diseases; Global Environmental and Occupational Health Research Hubs; the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network; and the Clean Cooking Implementation Science Network. Presently, Dr. Rosenthal co-chairs the NIH Working Group on Climate Change and Health. His current work is substantially focused on climate change and health, and on interventions to reduce exposure to household air pollution. Dr. Rosenthal’s research- and policy-related publications can be found at: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=BztHZSIAAAAJ

While the health consequences of climate change are becoming apparent around the world, the relevant agencies are woefully underprepared to address them. From trauma, injury, and deaths resulting from extreme weather events, to increased rates of infectious diseases, chronic respiratory and mental health conditions, the world is facing profound threats to the gains in public health that have been made over the past decades. For his Fulbright-Kalam fellowship, Dr. Rosenthal is working with Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER) in Chennai and other Indian institutions to develop a new master’s in public health (MPH) curriculum in the field of climate change and health.

Trevor Price

Dr. Trevor Price, PhD, FRS, is an expert on the effects of climate on the distribution of species. He has a bachelor’s degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a PhD in quantitative genetics from the University of Michigan. He is a tenured faculty member in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago

Dr. Price teaches courses in environmental ecology and biostatistics. His book, Ecology of a Changed World (Oxford University Press, 2022) summarizes the threats and challenges to the natural world in the 21st century. It forms the basis for the undergraduate courses he teaches to both biology majors and biology non-majors.

Dr. Price’s general research interests are in the distribution of biodiversity across the Himalaya and in the Indian subcontinent wherein he asks questions such as: why are there twice as many species in the east Himalaya (e.g. Sikkim) than in the west Himalaya (e.g. Himachal Pradesh)? Why are there more species in the mid-elevations in the Himalaya than at lower or higher elevations? What are the ongoing impacts of climate change and land-use change on the distribution of bird species? To tackle these questions, he studies birds and trees and uses various molecular techniques to assess the relationships among species and populations. He has published on these issues in journals such as Nature, Science, and Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.

Dr. Price is a former Guggenheim and Mercator fellow at the University of Cologne (2004). In 2016, he was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2022, he became a fellow of the Royal Society of London.

Dr. Price’s Fulbright-Kalam project is building on the baseline data collected from Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Himachal Pradesh, on bird abundances. The goals are to: extend research on birds in the breeding season in Himachal Pradesh, especially integrating the work by students from the host institution; expand the research from birds to birch trees, because birch is so important to the local communities; monitor bird populations in the winter in the Indian peninsula; teach at the University of Ladakh; and visit several institutions to disseminate findings and to learn more about what others are discovering.

Siva Gogineni

Dr. Siva Prasad Gogineni received a BE in electronics and communications from Mysore University in 1973, an MSc in engineering from Kerala University in 1976, and a PhD in electrical engineering from the University of Kansas (KU) in 1984. He began his teaching career as a visiting assistant professor in 1984 and retired as the Deane E. Ackers Distinguished Professor, in 2016 from KU. Currently, Dr. Gogineni is the Cudworth Professor in the College of Engineering and the director of the Remote Sensing Center at the University of Alabama (UA).

Dr. Gogineni was the founding director of the NSF Science and Technology Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) at KU from 2005 to 2016. He is an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) fellow and also served as manager of NASA’s polar program from 1997–1999. He received the Louise Byrd Graduate Educator Award at KU and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Tasmania in 2002.

Dr. Gogineni has been involved with radar sounding and imaging of ice sheets for about 35 years and contributed to the first successful demonstration of SAR imaging of the ice bed through more than 3-km-thick ice. He also led the development of ultra-wideband radars for measuring the thickness of snow over sea ice and the mapping of internal layers in polar firn and ice. Dr. Gogineni and his students also developed early versions of all radars flown as a part of NASA’s Operation IceBridge (OIB). Besides, the remote sensing team at UA demonstrated the first successful sounding of about 3-km-thick ice in Greenland and Antarctica at 750 MHz and 1.25 GHz, respectively. Dr. Gogineni is the lead author or co-author of 150 archival journal publications and has given or contributed to over 250 conference presentations.

Dr. Gogineni’s Fulbright-Kalam project is developing advanced radars for airborne monitoring of snow and ice in the Indian Himalayas in collaboration with institutions in India. The current systems do not provide adequate fine-resolution measurements of the vast freshwater resources on mountain glaciers and snow in high elevations because they are often difficult to measure using traditional in situ and labor-intensive methods. Advances in remote sensing and deployment platforms are required for regional airborne surveys of snow and ice. The project is also establishing long-term collaborations to develop airborne radars for fine-resolution regional-scale surveys of snow and ice.

Rajagopalan Balaji

Prof. Rajagopalan Balaji is a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering (CEAE) and a fellow of the Cooperative Institute of Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder. He was the former chair (2014–2022) of the department. He received his BTech in civil engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Kurukshetra, India, in 1989, MTech in optimization and reliability engineering from the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, in 1991, and a PhD in stochastic hydrology and hydroclimatology from Utah State University, Logan, in 1995. Following this, he worked as a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, NY, before joining the faculty of CEAE at CU, Boulder, where he was promoted to full professorship in 2010.

Prof. Balaji pursues research in diverse interdisciplinary areas spanning hydroclimatology, water resources management, Indian summer monsoon, paleoclimate, and stochastic hydrology. For his research contributing to the improved operations, management, and planning of water resources in the semiarid river basins of western USA, especially the Colorado River System, Prof. Balaji was a co-recipient of the Partners in Conservation Award from the Department of Interior in 2009. Besides, his joint work on unraveling the mystery of the Indian summer monsoon droughts which appeared in Science in 2006 was awarded the prestigious Norbert Gerbier Mumm Award from the World Meteorological Organization in 2009. In 2019, he was elected fellow of the American Geophysical Union..

Prof. Balaji has a strong publication record in peer-reviewed journals like Science, Nature Geoscience, and Geophysical Research Letters. He has also served as an associated editor of ASCE Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management and Geophysical Research Letters, and currently serves as an associate editor of Water Resources Research and Climate Research.

The socioeconomic health of India’s people and ecosystems is intricately tied to the pulse of its monsoonal climate and variability, but this is now under existential threat from climate change. The pressing need to understand the fingerprints of climate in natural and human systems to enable sustainable policies is motivating Prof. Balaji’s Fulbright-Kalam project. In this context, he is pursuing three research threads to understand and model the signatures of climate change and variability related to: hydroclimate extremes; water quality and public health; and the rise and fall of past societies in India and implications for future human migration.

Jasmeet Judge

Dr. Jasmeet Judge received her BS in physics from Stillman College, Alabama, and her MS in electrical engineering, and PhD in electrical engineering and atmospheric, oceanic, and space sciences from the University of Michigan. She is a professor in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department at the University of Florida, where she is also the director of the Center for Remote Sensing.

Dr. Judge’s research interests include microwave remote-sensing applications to terrestrial hydrology, crop development, and crop growth; electromagnetic models for dynamic agricultural terrains; and machine learning (ML) methods for spatio-temporal scaling and data-model fusion. For her research projects, she has received grants from NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She has led many field experiments with active and passive microwave sensors to develop/improve remote sensing, crop growth, hydrology, and ML algorithms. Dr. Judge has also won NASA Group Achievement Awards for interdisciplinary field campaigns. She has over 70 journal publications, three co-authored books, and numerous conference and invited presentations to her credit.

In addition to research, Dr. Judge has been active in advocating for the protection of the EM spectrum as the past member, vice chair, and chair of the National Academies Committee on Radio Frequency. She is also a member of the American Geophysical Union and a senior member of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society, where she has served in different roles on many committees for the past three decades.

Dr. Judge’s Fullbright-Kalam project is being carried out in collaboration with researchers in the Interdisciplinary Center for Water Research at the Indian Institute of Science in utilizing data from the upcoming NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission for the availability of timely soil and crop information in India. In addition, she is training the next generation of Indian scientists in microwave remote sensing.