Fulbright-Nehru Grant Categorys USA: Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award (Research)

James Pascoe

Prof. James Pascoe is an assistant professor of mathematics at Drexel University, working in various areas of mathematics. He graduated from the University of California, San Diego, under the guidance of Prof. Jim Agler in 2015. Prof. Pascoe’s international collaborations span the globe and a variety of mathematical topics, all united by the theme of using functional analysis to explore the semantic meaning of mathematics through a variety of avatars of mathematics. His existing collaborations with junior mathematicians in India include those with Sujit Sakharam Damase, Chandan Pradhan, and Nitin Tomar.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Prof. Pascoe is working with researchers at the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, with a focus on creating material links between the operator theory research communities in the United States and India. As part of the project, Prof. Pascoe, inspired by the great Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős, is visiting various institutes in India and speaking on topics in modern operator theory, while also helping junior mathematicians in establishing their research programs and connections with the global community.

Gita Pai

Dr. Gita Pai is a professor of history and the director of the International & Global Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL). Since joining the UWL faculty in 2010 after her MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, she has specialized as a cultural historian of early modern to modern South Asia, focusing on south-eastern India (present-day Tamil Nadu). Her research, supported by the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Townsend Center for the Humanities at UC Berkeley, the American Association of University Women, and UWL Faculty Research Grants, culminated in her first book, Architecture of Sovereignty: Stone Bodies, Colonial Gazes, and Living Gods in South India (Cambridge University Press, 2023). This work traces the historical transformations of a prominent temple site in Madurai through the lenses of architecture, sovereignty, visual culture, ritual practice, gender, and cultural tourism.

During her current Fulbright-Nehru tenure, Dr. Pai is advancing her book-in-progress, In Pursuit of Dancing Śiva: The History of India’s Iconic Cultural Treasure. Her research is examining the journey of Śiva Naṭarāja (Lord of Dance), a pinnacle of South Asian sculpture, from being a medieval Tamil devotional object to a centerpiece of contemporary restitution disputes. The project is also analyzing the icon’s evolution into a global symbol of Indian and Hindu identity. Dr. Pai is a past recipient of fellowships from the American Institute of Indian Studies and the Fulbright-Nehru Program.

Tanushree Mitra

Dr. Tanushree Mitra is an associate professor at the University of Washington’s Information School, where she leads the Social Computing and Algorithmic Experiences (SCALE) lab group. Her research focus is on human-centered AI and responsible AI wherein she combines computational techniques, AI, natural language processing (NLP), and social science principles to study the complex social processes underlying human–human and human–computer interactions in large-scale online systems. As an interdisciplinary scholar, she draws from a range of methods from the fields of human–computer interactions, large-scale data analytics, machine learning, and AI. Her work consistently centers human impact, interpretability, and the translation of research into real-world governance and safety solutions. Dr. Mitra’s research has been recognized through multiple honors, including an NSF-CAREER, an NSF-CRII, an early career ONR-YIP, and an Adamic-Glance Distinguished Young Researcher awards, along with several best paper awards. She received her PhD in computer science from Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing.

Dr. Mitra’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining how generative AI systems, such as large language and text-to-image models, reproduce sociocultural biases and misalignments, especially in high-stakes domains in Global South contexts. In partnership with the host institution, the project is developing methodologies to audit AI systems for cultural risks, and is building mixed-initiative workflows by combining machine intelligence, crowd workers, and experts to evaluate those risks at scale. The expected outcomes include new sociocultural AI audit frameworks, datasets, and evaluation metrics, culturally grounded AI capabilities, scalable annotation systems, peer-reviewed research, and strengthened international collaborations focused on responsible, equitable, and globally inclusive AI development.

Srikanta Mishra

“Blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people.” — Helen Keller

What if you struggle to follow conversations in a noisy restaurant or classroom, yet a hearing test tells you your hearing is “normal”? Why do some people hear effortlessly while others struggle long before any obvious hearing loss appears? These and many other questions that affect millions of people are at the center of Dr. Srikanta Mishra’s research.

Dr. Mishra is an audiologist, auditory neuroscientist, and educator who studies the earliest signs of hearing changes that may occur years before they become visible on standard hearing tests. He completed his schooling from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya, a unique residential public school system designed to nurture talented students from diverse and often underserved communities. This early educational experience shaped his appreciation for opportunity, education, and the importance of expanding access across backgrounds. He later pursued higher education in India, completed doctoral training in the UK, and continued his research career in the U.S., giving him an international perspective on science, hearing healthcare, and education. He is currently a tenured associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin.

His research explores why some individuals, children and adults alike, experience listening difficulties despite appearing to have “normal” hearing. By combining neuroscience, clinical science, engineering, and computational approaches, Dr. Mishra seeks to identify subtle changes in the auditory system at an early stage; his endeavor is to improve how hearing problems are detected and treated. His work aims to move hearing healthcare beyond simply asking whether someone can hear sounds, toward understanding how people function in real-world environments. Supported by research funding from the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Mishra is also committed to mentoring future scientists and building international collaborations.

Dr. Mishra’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is addressing a growing global health challenge at the intersection of hearing and brain health. Today, approximately 1.5 billion people worldwide live with hearing loss, and more than 55 million people live with dementia. The project is focusing on hearing loss, one of the largest modifiable risk factors for dementia, and is examining how social and economic inequalities shape these conditions in low- and middle-income countries. Working with the Centre for Brain Research at the Indian Institute of Science, Dr. Mishra aims to improve early identification and intervention strategies that may help people maintain healthier hearing, healthier brains, and better quality of life as they age.

Tracy Krumm

Ms. Tracy Krumm is director for artistic advancement at the Textile Center of Minnesota, where she also serves as curator, McKnight Fellowship director, and program consultant. An artist and educator with more than 35 years of experience, she has exhibited, taught, and lectured extensively. Her leadership and administrative work spans more than two decades of teaching, mentorship, and committee service, including appointments as visiting assistant professor at North Carolina State University’s art and design program and as assistant professor of fiber art at Kansas City Art Institute. She has served as a visiting artist and lecturer at over 30 institutions nationwide, leading workshops and critiques for college students, lifelong learners, and practicing artists in fiber art and textile traditions. Her honors include a McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, nominations for both USA Artist and the Tiffany Foundation Biennial awards, two International Folk Art Foundation project grants, and two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grants.

Her work has been included in the International Triennial of Tapestry, the Cheongju Craft Biennale, the Betonac Prize, and Young Americans in New York, as well as in more than 200 other exhibitions around the world. In 2012, the National Museum of Women in the Arts named her a Woman to Watch. Her work has also been featured in publications like the New York Times, Metalsmith, Sculpture, American Craft, and Surface Design Journal, as well as in the books, Textiles: The Art of Mankind (Thames & Hudson, 2012) and Cloth 100 Artists (Abrams, 2025).

Ms. Krumm’s work is part of the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), the Denver Art Museum, Kansas State University, Bloomingdale’s, the U.S. Embassy in Djibouti, the New Mexico Museum of Art, the Ford Motor Company, and the Heising-Simons Foundation.

Ms. Krumm’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing a collaborative model of co-creation between U.S. and Indian artists through Gujarat’s textile traditions – ajrakh, bandhani, weaving, and embroidery. Moving beyond transactional designer–artisan relationships, it is emphasizing upon shared authorship, fair trade, and artisan agency. The project, through studio exchange, reciprocal teaching, and fieldwork with the Khatri and Vankar communities, as well as with nomadic communities, is expected to generate new textile vocabularies, strengthen artisan visibility, and support sustainable livelihoods. The outcomes of the project – collaborative works, exhibitions, and publications – will extend impact across artistic and academic communities, thereby offering a replicable framework for equitable cross-cultural collaboration.

Jesse Jokerst

Dr. Jesse Jokerst is a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He graduated cum laude from Truman State University (Kirksville, MO) in 2003 with a BS in Chemistry and completed a PhD in chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009 (adviser: John T. McDevitt). He was a postdoc with the late Prof. Sanjiv Sam Gambhir at Stanford Radiology from 2009 to 2013, and was an instructor in the same department from 2013 to 2015. Dr. Jokerst joined UCSD in July 2015 where he leads a research program that integrates three distinct yet interdependent pillars: synthesis of nanoparticles, peptides, and small molecules; engineering of custom acoustic hardware and software tools; and human subjects research. Imaging (ultrasound, photoacoustics, and optical imaging) is the “glue” that binds these research areas together. His lab has active human subjects trials in wound care, COVID, arthritis, anticoagulation, and dentistry.

Dr. Jokerst has raised over USD 20 million to support his work, and has published over 180 manuscripts. His former trainees are at top universities and companies, including MIT, Harvard, Apple, and Intel. Dr. Jokerst has received the NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award, the NIH New Innovator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Stanford Radiology Alumni of the Year Award; he is also a Truman State Distinguished Alumni Fellow. Further, he is an associate editor at ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces and former chair of the NIH study section on imaging probes and contrast agents.

Dr. Jokerst’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing a fast, inexpensive test for active TB in rural and resource-limited settings in India. This project will generate materials science and biotechnology tools with applications beyond TB, and thus benefit U.S. taxpayers with new assays for flu, colds, and foodborne illness. For Indian citizens, it will deliver a portable, rugged TB diagnostic usable in both urban and remote settings.

Harjant Gill

Dr. Harjant Gill is a professor of anthropology at Towson University and an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work bridges ethnography, visual storytelling, and public scholarship. His research and creative practice explore masculinity, migration, media, religion, and popular culture in South Asia and its diasporas, with a particular focus on Punjab and Sikh communities. Through film and writing, he examines how intimate lives are shaped by patriarchy, nationalism, violence, and transnational mobility. Dr. Gill is the director of the internationally recognized documentary films Roots of Love, Mardistan/Macholand, and Sent Away Boys. His work has been broadcast on the BBC, PBS, and India’s Doordarshan, and screened widely at universities, film festivals, and public forums around the world. His scholarship has appeared in leading journals, including American Anthropologist, Ethnography, and Visual Anthropology Review. Dr. Gill’s forthcoming book, Coming of Age in Macholand (University of Chicago Press), offers a deeply personal ethnographic exploration of patriarchy, masculinity, violence, and migration in the Indian state of Punjab. He has received fellowships and awards from the American Institute of Indian Studies, the United States-India Educational Foundation, the Point Foundation, and the Wenner-Gren, Whiting, and Woodrow Wilson foundations. Born in Chandigarh, India, he now lives in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Gill’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring the everyday aesthetics of security in contemporary urban life. Through images, objects, and built environments, it is examining how barriers, checkpoints, cameras, fences, lighting, and architectural details quietly shape public space and social experience. The project is attending to the textures, moods, and visual languages of protection that have become ordinary and familiar. It is studying how security is designed and displayed to be absorbed into daily routines, thereby influencing movement, comfort, aspiration, and belonging. The project is also tracing how ideas of safety become materialized in subtle visual forms that structure the atmosphere and appearance of everyday life.

Hayden Bellenoit

Dr. Hayden Bellenoit is a professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. He is a legal and social historian of modern South Asia. His research focuses on colonial state formation, the histories of scribal communities, and the broader impact of colonial legal systems upon Indian social, religious, and cultural traditions. Dr. Bellenoit received his MA from Wheaton College and his DPhil in modern history from Oxford University. At the Naval Academy, he teaches courses on modern India and Pakistan. He has also been a visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge University, where he is a life member.

Dr. Bellenoit is the author of two books: Missionary Education and Empire in Late Colonial India, 1860–1920 (2007); and The Formation of the Colonial State in India: Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 1760–1860 (2017). His articles have appeared in top peer-reviewed academic journals such as Modern Asian Studies, Law and History Review, South Asian History and Culture, and Indian Law Review. He is currently completing an article on how Mughal-era legal customs were read into the codification of Hindu property law and inheritance.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Bellenoit is conducting research for his third book, “Judges, Case Law and Jurisprudence: The Legal Construction of Caste in India, c. 1830–1950”. This will be the first book to fully address the question of modern constructions of caste/social hierarchy in India as a result of the broader phenomena of colonial law. It will carefully examine how colonial case law, the training of Indian judges and lawyers, and the resultant jurisprudence, all broadly combined to shape modern understandings about the relationship between caste and law.

Mudasir Andrabi

Dr. Mudasir Andrabi is an associate professor at Capstone College of Nursing, University of Alabama, with expertise in cardiovascular health, stroke prevention, behavioral health interventions, and community-engaged research. Her work focuses on addressing hypertension and cardiovascular disparities among underserved populations through culturally responsive and technology-enabled interventions.

Dr. Andrabi earned her doctorate in health promotion from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, USA. She has extensive experience in teaching, research, mentorship, and academic leadership. Her work integrates public health, nursing, behavioral science, and digital health approaches to improve cardiovascular outcomes and promote health equity. She has led and collaborated on multiple interdisciplinary research projects focused on hypertension management, stroke caregiving, medication adherence, physical activity, and chronic disease prevention.

Her research interests include digital health interventions, game-based behavioral strategies, AI in nursing education, and cardiovascular health promotion. She is currently developing innovative interventions that integrate blood pressure monitoring, physical activity tracking, medication adherence support, and health education for adults at risk of cardiovascular disease. She is also actively engaged in international collaborations on culturally tailored cardiovascular disease prevention strategies.

Dr. Andrabi has authored and co-authored numerous peer-reviewed publications and conference presentations. Her work has been presented at regional, national, and international scientific meetings, and has contributed to advancing nursing science and community-based cardiovascular disease prevention efforts. She also serves in several leadership roles within academic and professional organizations. She is actively involved in developing ethical guidelines for the responsible integration of AI in nursing education and scholarship. Her long-term professional goal is to advance global cardiovascular health equity.

Dr. Andrabi’s Fulbright-Nehru project is co-developing and piloting the South Asian Cardiovascular Risk Education and Digital Coaching (SACRED) program, a culturally tailored intervention designed to reduce cardiovascular disease risk among adults aged 50 and older in Delhi, India. The project is using a mixed-methods approach, and its findings will guide the development of a digital coaching intervention delivered through WhatsApp and ASCVD risk assessment tools. The project also aims to improve heart health behaviors, strengthen global nursing collaborations, and advance culturally responsive cardiovascular disease prevention strategies.

Samuel Aggrey

Prof. Samuel Aggrey is a distinguished research professor in genetics and genomics at the University of Georgia (UGA), USA. He holds the Richard B. Russell Endowed Chair and is also a professor in the Department of Poultry Science at Athens, Georgia.

Prof. Aggrey is a co-editor of Poultry Genetics, Breeding and Biotechnology and the lead editor of Advances in Poultry Genetics and Genomics. He has also authored numerous book chapters and over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He has trained postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers from around the world and maintains strong collaborative partnerships across Africa, Asia, and Europe.
His notable honors include the Jaap Memorial Lectureship at the Ohio State University; the D.W. Brooks Award for Excellence in Research (UGA); the UGA Student Career Influencer Award; the Broiler Research Award from the Poultry Science Association; the Changxin Chu Fund Award (China Agricultural University Educational Foundation/World’s Poultry Science Association); the Carnegie Fellowship; the World’s Poultry Science Association Siegel Research Award; and the D.W. Brooks awards for excellence in international agriculture and for excellence in diversity (UGA).

Prof. Aggrey serves as the capacity building pillar chair and as a member of the Executive Committee of the African Animal Breeding Network. He is also a member of the High-Level Think Tank on Technological Issues in African Agriculture, and contributes to the African Union’s Working Group on Animal Seed under the African Seed and Biotechnology Partnership Platform.

His current research interests include quantitative genetics and genomics of stressors (climate change and Eimeria spp. infection), as well as modeling and precision animal agriculture.

Prof. Aggrey’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the potential of polyamine-enhancing nutritional strategies as alternatives to pharmaceutical interventions in combating Eimeria spp. infection in poultry. It is integrating molecular biology, parasitology, and applied poultry science through multi-omics approaches to advance innovative health management strategies. The project aims to enhance host resilience, provide mechanistic insights into how polyamines improve poultry health, expand frameworks for nutritional immunomodulation, and develop biomarkers.