Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowships (Research and Teaching) Archives

Tanika Chakraborty

Dr. Tanika Chakraborty is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, specializing in Development Economics. Before joining IIM Calcutta, she worked at IIT Kanpur and DIW Berlin, after completing her PhD at Washington University in St. Louis. She is affiliated to IZA Bonn, CESifo Munich, and the Global Labor Organization.

Dr. Chakraborty’s research primarily focuses on informing policies that address human capital inequality. Her work has been featured in the Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Demography, and the Journal of Comparative Economics, among others. In addition to publishing in academic journals, she writes for print media and policy platforms such as VoxDev, Project Syndicate, and Ideas for India to reach out to a wider policy audience. She has also partnered extensively with various government bodies in India and served as an expert on the Minimum Wage committee of the Government of India.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence (Research and Teaching) Fellowship at City College, City University of New York, Dr. Chakraborty is expanding on her ongoing research, exploring effective ways of reducing inequalities in health, a key component of human capital. She is examining the widespread shift in healthcare delivery models, from direct public provision to public-private partnerships. She will engage with students to develop a course on health policy that combines perspectives from the US and India. The goal is to contribute to the global dialogue on rising healthcare costs and growing health inequalities.

Susmita Sur-Kolay

Dr. Susmita Sur-Kolay is a Visting Professor of Computer Science in Ashoka University. Till 2024, she was a Professor in the Advanced Computing and Microelectronics Unit of the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. Earlier, she was a Reader in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Jadavpur University, a post-doctoral fellow at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a Research Assistant at the Laboratory for Computer Science in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.

Dr Sur-Kolay’s research contributions are in algorithmic design automation for electronic and quantum circuits, fault modeling and testing, hardware security, and graph algorithms. She has co-authored several papers in international journals and refereed conference proceedings, three book chapters, and co-edited three books.

She has served on the committees of international conferences and on the editorial board of major journals. She was a Distinguished Visitor of IEEE Computer Society (India), and is a Fellow of Indian National Science Academy and Indian National Academy of Engineering. She has received the President of India Gold Medal and Distinguished Alumnus Award at IIT Kharagpur, Women in Technology Leadership Award from VLSI Society of India and International Excellence Fellowship at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (2024).

During her tenure of the Fulbright-Nehru Academic Excellence Fellowship at UC San Diego, Dr. Sur-Kolay is aiming to design efficient methods for the layout phase of mapping quantum algorithms to the target quantum hardware with error correction capabilities and to teach related courses.

Sonal

Dr. Sonal is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi, where she teaches the history of colonial India and different dimensions of Indian and world history. She has previously taught at various undergraduate colleges of Delhi University, including Ramjas, Lady Shri Ram, Kamala Nehru, and Shivaji College.

A former Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow and Visiting Fellow at Yale Centre for British Art, Dr Sonal’s research interests focus on material and visual culture during East India Company rule in India. Her doctoral research Textures of Exchange: The Maratha States, the Mughals, and the English East India Company examined material culture in diplomacy between Indian rulers and the Company (mid-18th to mid-19th century). Currently, she is exploring colonial India’s visual cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow (Research and Teaching), Dr Sonal is investigating the satirical artworks published in the then-contemporary periodicals and newspapers that resonated with the sensibilities of the middle-class readership. She aims to unravel how caricatures reflected the socio-political commentary, serving as a medium for voices to critique the East India Company and British colonialism. In addition to her research, Dr. Sonal will teach visual cultures of colonial India and a survey course on Indian art.