Fulbright-Nehru Grant Category India: Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowships

Chandrika Konwar

Ms. Chandrika Konwar is a Ph.D. scholar at the Dr. B. R. Ambedkar Center for Biomedical Research (ACBR), University of Delhi, Delhi. Her Ph.D. project explores the impact of gene regulation on cell death and aging which includes extensive experimentation with Caenorhabditis elegans (a nematode worm), molecular biology, microscopy and proteomics in parallel with big data and systems biology.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, Konwar is studying the role of SIN3 in cancer by using C. elegans as the model system. This is expected to add new knowledge on cancer development and diagnosis and will help create the prospect of using the nematode as a disease model to elucidate the cellular and molecular markers underpinning tumorigenesis.

Prior to her Ph.D., she completed her B.Sc. (Biochemistry) and M.Sc. (Biomedical Science) from the University of Delhi. She has worked on several research projects including but not limited to finding new drug targets and natural remedies for infectious diseases like gonorrhoea and tuberculosis. She has also done some exciting interdisciplinary research on the social connotations of health and well-being within Indian sub-populations. Most of her findings have been published in reputed peer-reviewed journals and presented in conferences.

Ms. Konwar is a firm believer in open science and interdisciplinary research, and a strong proponent of science communication, public policy and sustainability. Apart from research, she devotes her time towards developing new skills and writing creative articles for different media as well as volunteering for social causes.

Simardeep Kaur

Ms. Simardeep Kaur is a doctoral candidate in the Division of Biochemistry, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Her doctoral thesis focuses on deciphering the microRNA related modulations in contrasting rice genotypes under drought stress. Global climate change and associated adverse effects such as drought greatly influence plant growth and development thus, affecting crop yield, quality and agricultural sustainability as well.

As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow she will be working with bioinformatics experts to further improve her understanding of bioinformatic tools and software for comprehensive analysis of the data generated from the molecular biology related work (mainly drought related) from wet-lab experiments. She will learn to handle large data sets like those for transcriptome, lncRNAs, miRNAs, validation techniques and their analysis so that she can integrate molecular biology with bioinformatics to develop drought tolerant agricultural crops. Therefore, work carried out during the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship will substantiate and help speed the progression of ongoing research projects towards developing a climate-smart cultivar for sustainable food production in the near future.

She went to Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana for her graduation in Biochemistry in 2017 and then attended the graduate school at PAU for her M.Sc. in Biochemistry in 2019. She worked on the Biochemical basis of leaf blight resistance in barley and published her results in a reputed journal. During her master’s, she received a gold medal for excellence in chemistry/biochemistry, a PAU merit Fellowship, the Pyara Singh Parmar award, and also represented PAU at the Indian Students Parliament held in Pune, Maharashtra. She is a recipient of the JRF and SRF from the CSIR in her Ph.D. and also cleared other national level examinations like GATE (Life Sciences), ICAR-NET, ARS-prelims, JNUEE etc.

When she is not working in her lab, Simardeep spends most of her time reading novels, cooking food for family, and exploring new places. A travel enthusiast and hodophile, she feeds her addiction by visiting as many places with her favourite Agronomist as she can.

Balasubramanian Geetha

Ms. Balasubramanian Geetha is a Ph.D. candidate and Teaching Assistant in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. She has completed her graduate and postgraduate studies in English Literature from Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, and Jamia Millia Islamia, respectively. She has received the GV Subramanyam Award and Nelabhatla Memorial Prize for her academic performance in B.A. (Hons.) English. She is also a gold medallist for her highest academic standing in M.A. English.

Geetha’s doctoral dissertation specifically focuses on the emergence of the hero-star Vijay Sethupathi (VJS) to examine the shifts in the cinematic representations of the hero figure in contemporary Tamil cinema. As a Fulbright-Nehru fellow, she intends to formulate an alternative framework of stardom to study the figural possibilities of VJS at the intersection of changes in narrative techniques, aesthetic constitution, and digital technologies. Through the Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, she plans to engage with this research dimension by gaining infrastructural access to South Asian libraries and archives, audio-visual material, and interacting with a wider intellectual community for expanding her disciplinary knowledge in the field of Cinema Studies.

Geetha’s research interests include Literary Studies, Film and Cultural Studies, Star Studies, and South Asian Popular Culture. She has presented papers at various academic forums such as American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), The Annual Conference on South Asia, and UGC-sponsored national conferences. Her forthcoming book chapter on the anti-caste politics of the Tamil film Pariyerum Perumal (2018) will be published in the anthology titled The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India (2022).

As a performance poet, Geetha has performed her writing pieces at multiple creative platforms like Poems India, Toronto International Festival of Authors, and Airplane Poetry Movement. She is also the winner of the Delhi Poetry Festival 2015. Further, she has been a part of the theatre group ‘Expressions’ in Jamia Millia Islamia and participated in street plays and proscenium stage performances at the National School of Drama and The Shakespeare Society of India. Finally, her poems have been published in the feminist anthology entitled The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess Within (2021) and Pixie Dust and All Things Magical (2022).

Priya Gagansingh Thakur

Ms. Priya Thakur is a Ph.D. research scholar at CSIR-Institute of Genomics and integrative Biology, New Delhi, working in the field of disease modelling and CRISPR-cas genome editing. She is working towards modelling Gaucher Disease- the most common lysosomal storage disorder. It is caused due to genetic mutations in the GBA gene and is also the most common genetic risk factor for Parkinson’s Disease. She is interested in understanding the pathophysiological mechanism of the disease using patient derived induced pluripotent stem cells. These cells can be differentiated into disease affected cell types and can recapitulate the disease. Through the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellowship, she will work with field experts to overcome her limitations in achieving her research objectives.

Prior to joining IGIB, she worked as a project junior research fellow, to understand the role of histone proteins in breast cancer, under Dr. Sanjay Gupta at the Tata Memorial Centre-Advanced Centre for Treatment Research and Education in Cancer(TMC-ACTREC), Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra. She received her master’s degree in Medical Biotechnology from M.S University, Baroda, Gujarat, and her bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from Mumbai University, Maharashtra. Apart from working in the lab, she enjoys watching movies, listening to music, and participating in adventure sports.

Arya Alvernas

Mr. Rishiraj Adhikary is a Ph.D. student at the Computer Science Department, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, Gujarat. His research interest is in human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing and sensor-enabled embedded systems that can impact healthcare delivery or pave the way towards making healthcare more accessible. His current research focuses on retrofitting consumer-grade masks with sensors to detect lung health. His prior work has also studied the perception of people around air pollution to aid in risk communication.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, he will study how contexts like human activity can be leveraged to implement opportunistic sensing techniques in smart masks. Successful research on context sensing will pave the way to preserve privacy and reduce the energy consumption of a smart face mask.

Mr. Adhikary received his B.Tech. (Electronics and Communication Engineering) from Gauhati University, Assam, where his capstone project was recognised as the best project. He has successfully conducted events targeting school children in the past where he has demonstrated prototyping tools to help students understand the basics of electronics. He also takes a keen interest in teaching undergraduate and school students.

Rishiraj Adhikary

Mr. Rishiraj Adhikary is a Ph.D. student at the Computer Science Department, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Gandhinagar, Gujarat. His research interest is in human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing and sensor-enabled embedded systems that can impact healthcare delivery or pave the way towards making healthcare more accessible. His current research focuses on retrofitting consumer-grade masks with sensors to detect lung health. His prior work has also studied the perception of people around air pollution to aid in risk communication.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship, he will study how contexts like human activity can be leveraged to implement opportunistic sensing techniques in smart masks. Successful research on context sensing will pave the way to preserve privacy and reduce the energy consumption of a smart face mask.

Mr. Adhikary received his B.Tech. (Electronics and Communication Engineering) from Gauhati University, Assam, where his capstone project was recognised as the best project. He has successfully conducted events targeting school children in the past where he has demonstrated prototyping tools to help students understand the basics of electronics. He also takes a keen interest in teaching undergraduate and school students.

Anna Lynn Tom

Anna Lynn Tom is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Comparative Literature and India Studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. She received the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research (ICSSR) doctoral research fellowship in 2022 for her study on interventional feminist practices in contemporary visual art in India. Previously, she was as an assistant professor in English at St. Joseph’s College of Commerce, Bengaluru. She completed her master’s from EFL University, Hyderabad, focusing in Indian and world literatures.

Anna has published critical writing on gender, art and culture on Indian online platforms such as The Chakkar, Live Wire, Catharsis, Articulate, and ASAP Art Connect. She has also published book chapters and academic papers in research journals. She has presented her ongoing work on the presence of women and queer artists in the contemporary Indian art scene at national and international conferences. Through her doctoral research, Anna aims to understand different methods of reading feminist art of the Indian contemporary through bodily mediated encounters within the decolonial avant-garde.

As a Fulbright Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, Anna is conducting a comparative analysis of understanding feminist interventions during the period of the women’s movements (roughly 1960 – 1990) in the U.S. and India through an exploration of the Miriam Schapiro Archives on Women Artists. Anna is an avid consumer of fiction and cinema. She also practices experimental forms of writing and photography.

Asad Tariq

Asad Tariq is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He completed his MA in economics with distinction from Jamia Millia Islamia, and BA from the University of Allahabad. His research interest lies at the intersection of development economics, politics, and religion. His work aims to document the discrimination against marginalised groups in India and investigate possible policy measures that aid their upliftment and development.

During his Ph.D., he has been awarded the Commonwealth Split-Site Scholarship in 2023 which sponsored 12 months of research at the Imperial College London. He is also a recipient of the Junior Research Fellowship by the University Grants Commission, India. He has presented his work at multiple national and international conferences. He has also been a part of multiple research projects under the Department of Science and Technology (Government of India) and Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research among others.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at Brown University, Providence, RI, Asad is evaluating the influence of Members of Legislative Assembly from religious minority backgrounds in India on the provision of public goods targeted towards minorities. He also hopes to compile a collection of essays employing econometric methods to illuminate the challenges faced by Indian marginalized groups. When he is not crunching numbers using econometric models, Asad can be found at a picket, savouring nihari-paya in the labyrinthine alleys of Purani Dilli and Okhla, or reading Allama Iqbal’s poetry.

Apoorva Singh

Apoorva Singh is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. His doctoral thesis focuses on understanding the charge transport and degradation mechanisms in perovskite based solar cells and devices incorporating device fabrication and advanced electrical, optical and materials characterizations. Apoorva has published academic papers and presented his work at various national and international conferences. He has collaborated with prominent international research groups and research facilities including ones at the University of Oxford and Soleil French-National Synchrotron Facility.

Apoorva holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MJP Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, and a master’s degree in engineering by research from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR), Bengaluru. After completing his master’s from JNCASR and prior to joining the Ph.D. program at IISc, Apoorva served as a senior project associate at the National Centre for Flexible Electronics, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, Apoorva is studying perovskite solar cells, investigating the evolution in defects and recombination mechanisms at different stages of degradation through spectroscopic procedures. The insights gained from his research will contribute to achieving optimal device performance and stability in the field. Apoorva actively organizes and takes on leadership roles in various academic and cultural activities. He is a music enthusiast, with skill in live mixing, and he also enjoys reading, playing chess, and exploring new places.

Harish Sankar Aghila

Harish S A is a Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad. The broader domains encompassing his research interests include networks, systems, and security. His current research explores the security implications of in-network systems that leverage cutting-edge technologies like software-defined networks and programmable data planes.

Harish is a recipient of the prestigious Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PMRF) awarded by the Ministry of Education, Government of India. As a part of his doctoral research, he actively engaged in a security project alongside ASEAN countries and participated in their student exchange program. He published research papers and presented his work at reputed international venues. Additionally, he has received the notable SIGCOMM travel grant award, among many others.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from the National Institute of Technology Puducherry, during which time he interned with the UMR TETIS Joint Research Unit in Montpellier, France. He holds a master’s degree in computer engineering (cyber security) from the National Institute of Technology Kurukshetra.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow at the University of Texas, Austin, TX, Harish is examining to secure data-driven, in-network systems built on high-speed programmable data planes against adversarial inputs. His vision is to bolster the resilience of next-generation computer networks against security threats. Harish teaches undergraduate students about network security. He enjoys road trips and chess.