Michael (Donagh) Coleman

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program (DDRA)
Project Title:	Between Worlds – Cultural Bodies, Death Processes, and Tukdam
Field of Study:	Medical Anthropology
Home Institution:	University of California-Berkeley   Berkeley, CA
Host Institution:	Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA), Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh
Grant Start Month:	January 2025
Duration of Grant:	Six months

Brief Bio:

Michael (Donagh) Coleman holds degrees in philosophy and psychology (BA) and in music and media technologies (MPhil) from Trinity College Dublin, and an MA in Asian studies from UC Berkeley. He is currently a PhD candidate in medical anthropology at UC Berkeley where his dissertation research focuses on Tibetan Buddhist tukdam deaths and their Tibetan and scientific figurations. Donagh was a 2022 Dissertation Fellow at the ACLS/Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Program in Buddhist Studies. He has also worked as a documentary filmmaker and made award-winning films with wide international festival and TV exposure like Tukdam: Between Worlds (2022), A Gesar Bard’s Tale (2013), and Stone Pastures (2008). Donagh’s films have also been shown at museums such as MoMA and the Rubin Museum of Art in New York, and by the European Commission.

In the state of tukdam, the bodies of meditators do not show usual signs of death for days or even weeks after clinical death. According to Tibetan Buddhists, the practitioners are resting in a subtle state of consciousness and are still in the process of dying. Donagh’s Fulbright-Hays project is juxtaposing Tibetan and biomedical understandings of death and tukdam, with a particular focus on a scientific study of tukdam in Tibetan settlements in India. He is looking at issues of incommensurability between Indo-Tibetan and scientific views, related questions of consciousness, and the cultural power that science may exert over Tibetan Buddhist knowledge and its formulations in this context.

Devin Creed

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program (DDRA)
Project Title:	Giving for Eating: Famine, Humanitarianism, and Nutrition Science in Bengal and North India, 1837–1975
Field of Study:	History
Home Institution:	Duke University   Durham, NC
Host Institution:	Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta Kolkata, Kolkata, West Bengal
Grant Start Month:	February 2025
Duration of Grant:	Seven months

Brief Bio:

Devin Creed is a PhD candidate in South Asian history at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Devin’s dissertation examines the changes in the practices and ideologies of “giving for eating” in the context of famines in nineteenth- and twentieth-century South Asia. At Duke, Devin has been a Kenan Graduate Fellow, a Capper Fellow in intellectual history, and a fellow at the PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge. He has made public presentations on: the erotica of the pickle in South Asian literature and history; traces of Portuguese cuisine in modern West Bengal; the political theory of B.R. Ambedkar; and the history of Catholic missions in Meghalaya.

He has previously received grants to conduct research in Philadelphia (on the Knights of Labor), London (on British famine policy), Northern Ireland (on martyrdom in the Irish Republican Army), and India (on famine relief). He received his MA in modern European history from Villanova University (Pennsylvania) and his BA in economics and English literature from Hillsdale College (Michigan).

Devin is an avid cook and food experimenter who spends a good deal of his time pickling, fermenting, baking, and cooking. He enjoys reading science fiction, watching films, backpacking, hiking, singing, and learning languages

Devin’s Fulbright-Hays project is analyzing how South Asians contributed to, contested, and adapted nascent forms of Western humanitarianism, in the process forming hybrid cultures of care and charity. Concurrently, he is examining the arrival of modern nutrition science as a developmental technology of colonial governance which clashed with indigenous foodways. The phrase “giving for eating” highlights his novel approach to the study of famines; this approach combines an archaeology of annadana and other food-gifting practices with a material analysis of famine foods. This turn to the alimentary allows him to show the ways in which endemic famine became constitutive of modern regimes of charity and foodways in South Asia. Devin is accomplishing this through studying archival materials in Bangla, Urdu, Hindi, and English, and by drawing on neo-materialist methods to recreate famine foods.

Alyssa Heinze

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Program (DDRA)
Project Title:	The Politics of Drought and Gender Inequality in Rural Maharashtra
Field of Study:	Political Science
Home Institution:	University of California-Berkeley   Berkeley, CA
Host Institution:	TBC, Maharashtra, Maharashtra
Grant Start Month:	January 2025
Duration of Grant:	Eight months

Brief Bio:

Alyssa Heinze is a PhD Candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. She researches gendered understandings of: the political economy of local development; political inequality; and the consequences of climate change. She is a two-time Fulbright fellowship recipient. Alyssa holds an MSc in economics from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and a BA in political science and South Asian studies from Dartmouth College. She has worked for the Impact Data and Evidence Aggregation Library project at the World Bank; she was part of the Research, Evaluation and Data Team at IDinsight and of the Women’s Economic Empowerment Unit at the U.S. Department of State. She has also done stints with Vera Solutions in Mumbai, India, and with Chhori in Kathmandu, Nepal.

In her Fulbright-Hays project, Alyssa is examining how state policies – community water governance and drought relief programs – can mitigate the gender inequalities caused by drought. She hypothesizes that women’s inclusion in these policies is pivotal for the prevention of drought-induced gender inequality. Alyssa’s study is located in Maharashtra, India, a region susceptible to the adverse effects of drought. Employing a mixed-methods approach, she is gathering qualitative and quantitative data to assess the causal relationship between state intervention, drought, and gender inequality. This study is expected to inform policy formulation on increasing the resilience of climate-vulnerable communities across India.

Jasmeet Judge

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Kalam Fellowship
Project Title:	Soil and Crop Information for Agricultural Systems in India Using Novel Satellite Observations
Field of Study:	Environmental Sciences
Home Institution:	University of Florida   Gainesville, FL
Host Institution:	Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Grant Start Month:	December 2024
Duration of Grant:	Five months

Brief Bio:

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.

Sandip Mazumder

Grant Category:	Fulbright-Kalam Fellowship
Project Title:	Greenhouse Gases, Radiation, and Global Warming: Modules for Education and Research
Field of Study:	Engineering
Home Institution:	The Ohio State University   Columbus, OH
Host Institution:	Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Grant Start Month:	January 2025
Duration of Grant:	Four and a half months

Brief Bio:

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.

Frank Barnas

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Re-imagining Mass Communication and Journalism Education
Field of Study:	Communication and Journalism
Home Institution:	Middle Tennessee State University   Murfreesboro, TN
Host Institution:	St. Joseph’s University, Bengaluru, Karnataka
Grant Start Month:	July 2025
Duration of Grant:	42 days

Brief Bio:

Mr. Frank Barnas is one of the leading global scholars in developing programs in broadcast journalism and mass media. His academic history includes teaching in Bulgaria and Lithuania, delivering seminars in Russia, developing online coursework in Germany, and working with study abroad programs in Russia and Ireland. He has also professional experience as a television news reporter and news/talk radio host.

As an active documentary producer with credits ranging from Antarctica to Moldova, his projects have received nearly 60 awards from festivals, including from the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Telly Awards, and Worldfest Houston. His latest documentary, The Cost of Caring, examines the high suicide rate within the veterinary community. It has been distributed on PBS stations throughout the U.S. as well as on Vimeo and Amazon Prime.

Mr. Barnas holds degrees from the University of Missouri, the University of Texas, and Florida State University. His ninth and tenth textbooks will be released in 2026. When he is not in the studio, he hikes the Appalachian Trail, enjoys rock climbing, and produces the Voca Vacay travel podcast with his wife Marie.

Bharat Bhushan

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Bio- & Nanotechnology and Biomimetics
Field of Study:	Engineering Education
Home Institution:	Ohio State University   Columbus, OH
Host Institution:	Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Goa Campus, Goa
Grant Start Month:	August 2025
Duration of Grant:	42 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Bharat Bhushan is an academy professor (San Jose, California), and has served as an Ohio Eminent Scholar and Howard D. Winbigler Professor, and as director of the Nanoprobe Laboratory for Bio/Nanotechnology and Biomimetics at Ohio State University, Ohio. From 2013 to 2014, he served as an ASME/AAAS science and technology policy fellow of the U.S. Congress. He holds a BS, two MS degrees, and a PhD in mechanical engineering, as well as an MBA and five honorary doctorates, a total of 10 college degrees. His research interests include fundamental studies in the interdisciplinary areas of bio/nanotribology/nanomechanics, nanomaterials characterization, scanning probe techniques, magnetic storage, bio/nanotechnology, nanomanufacturing, bioinspired liquid repellency, self-cleaning, anti-icing, anti-fouling, and water harvesting, science and technology policy.

Dr. Bhushan has authored 11 scientific books, over 100 handbook chapters, and over 900 scientific papers. He is one of the 1,248 highly cited researchers in all fields on Google Scholar, with an h-index of over 150 and with over 115,000 citations; Scopus’s one of 401 scientists for career-long citation impact across all fields out of over eight million scientists from around world; the fourth highly cited researcher in mechanical engineering; 149th most cited researcher in materials science; and an ISI highly cited researcher in materials science and in the cross-field category. He has made over 400 invited presentations, including over 300 keynote/plenary addresses at major international conferences across six continents. In 2019, he also delivered a TEDx lecture.

Dr. Bhushan is the recipient of numerous awards and international fellowships, and is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts and the International Academy of Engineering (Russia). He has worked for various industrial research labs, including Mechanical Technology Inc., SKF, and the IBM Almaden Research Center. He is an alum of BITS, Pilani, and a recipient of the 2015 BITS (Pilani) Distinguished Alumnus Award. He can be contacted via: (bhushan100@outlook.com); (linkedin.com/in/dr-bharat-bhushan-48011871); and (facebook.com/bhushanb100).
 

Feler Bose

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Global Insights: Law, Economics, and Culture
Field of Study:	Economics
Home Institution:	Indiana University   East, Richmond, IN
Host Institution:	Rajagiri School of Business, Kochi, Kerala
Grant Start Month:	June 2025
Duration of Grant:	14 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Feler Bose is an economics and finance professor at Indiana University East. His undergraduate studies culminated in degrees in engineering physics and chemistry from Hope College, Michigan. He then completed his MS in mechanical engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia. He worked for a few years in the paper industry before realizing his interests were not in engineering. He returned to school and received his PhD in economics from George Mason University, Virginia.

Dr. Bose’s research is multifaceted, encompassing applied microeconomics, political economy, law and economics, and the economics of religion. His current investigations delve into the impact of legislative structures on power dynamics, the significance of culture in societal development, and the opportunity cost associated with sexual freedom. His scholarly contributions extend beyond the academia. He has numerous publications in peer-reviewed journals and has authored book chapters, law briefs, a book, and regulatory analyses. He has also presented his research at several national and international outlets, addressing a diverse audience of both professionals and lay people. He is a member of various professional organizations, and his outstanding contributions to teaching and research have earned him multiple awards at his university.

Leonardo Flores

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Digital Creativity and AI: A North-South Dialogue
Field of Study:	American (U.S.) Studies
Home Institution:	Appalachian State University   Boone, NC
Host Institution:	Indian Institute of Technology, Jodhpur, Rajasthan
Grant Start Month:	August 2025
Duration of Grant:	16 days

Brief Bio:

Professor Leonardo Flores is the chair of the Department of English at Appalachian State University and the president of the Latin American Electronic Literature Network – Lit(e)Lat. His research areas are electronic literature, with a focus on e-poetry, digital writing, and the history and strategic growth of the field. He is known for “I ♥ E-Poetry”, the “Electronic Literature Collection, Volume 3”, “Third Generation Electronic Literature”, and the “Antología Lit(e)Lat, Volume 1”. He was a member of the MLA-CCCC Joint Task Force on AI and Writing and is now part of the MLA Task Force on Generative AI Initiatives. He is available to offer talks and workshops on AI and its impact on education, policy, scholarship, and creativity. Professor Flores is also a cyborg digital writer with a thriving creative coding practice. For more information on his current work, visit leonardoflores.net.

Jeffrey P. Friedman

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	(Re)searching Danced Narratives
Field of Study:	American (U.S.) Studies
Home Institution:	Rutgers University   New Brunswick, NJ
Host Institution:	Shiv Nadar University, Greater NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh
Grant Start Month:	April 2025
Duration of Grant:	42 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Jeff Friedman is a dance artist and scholar, and has been professor of dance studies at Rutgers University, New Jersey, since 2003. His research includes developing an embodied oral history interview methodology to serve the dance communities of the San Francisco Bay Area as founding director of the LEGACY Oral History Program (https://www.mpdsf.org/). He has received numerous grants and awards for his contributions to dance-related oral history documentation, including seven grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, ten years of grants from the California Arts Council, and the Forrest C. Pogue and James V. Mink service awards for oral history from the north-east and south-west regions of the National Oral History Association. His documentary dance film titled Muscle Memory, choreographed based on LEGACY’s oral history collection, has been performed worldwide, creating a new protocol for converting oral histories into documentary dance works. Over the course of his career, Dr. Friedman has been a Fulbright Fellow (in Germany) and a visiting lecturer and visiting dance critic in several institutions and countries.

Devin K. Harris

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Enhancing Sustainable Materials and Infrastructure Research
Field of Study:	Engineering Education
Home Institution:	University of Virginia   Charlottesville, VA
Host Institution:	National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, Tamil Nadu
Grant Start Month:	January 2026
Duration of Grant:	31 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Devin Harris is professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia (UVA). He is also a member of UVA’s Link Lab, a leading research center focused on cyber-physical systems. He earned his BS in civil engineering from the University of Florida and his MS and PhD from Virginia Tech. His research centers on large-scale civil infrastructure systems with an emphasis on smart cities and technology integration. His work spans image-based measurement techniques, virtual and augmented reality, crowdsourcing, artificial intelligence, data analytics, structural health monitoring, and the use of innovative materials in infrastructure. Recently, his research advanced applications of digital twins and immersive technologies in civil infrastructure and engineering education. Through these efforts, Dr. Harris seeks to enhance resilience, sustainability, and the role of emerging technologies in shaping future infrastructure systems.

Millard Keith

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Planning for Heat Resilience
Field of Study:	Urban Planning
Home Institution:	The University of Arizona   Tucson, AZ
Host Institution:	National Institute of Technology, Patna, Bihar
Grant Start Month:	November 2025
Duration of Grant:	14 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Ladd Keith is an associate professor in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, director of the Heat Resilience Initiative, associate research professor at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, and a distinguished scholar at the University of Arizona. His transdisciplinary research focuses on heat planning, policy, and governance to help increase the heat resilience of communities, regions, and nations across the world. He is the University of Arizona lead of the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Southwest Urban Corridor Integrated Field Laboratory (SW-IFL); the heat research lead of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration-funded Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS); co-investigator of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Building Resilience Against Climate Effects (BRACE); and co-investigator of the U.S. National Institutes of Health-funded Southwest Center on Resilience for Climate Change and Health (SCORCH). Dr. Keith also serves on the Management Committee for the Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN), a World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization joint initiative to protect global populations from the health risks of extreme heat. He has a PhD in arid lands resource sciences and an MS in planning from the University of Arizona.

John C. Lore III

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Strengthening Expertise in Clinical Legal Education
Field of Study:	Law
Home Institution:	Rutgers University   Camden, NJ
Host Institution:	, New Delhi, Delhi
Grant Start Month:	July 2025
Duration of Grant:	29 days

Brief Bio:

Professor John Lore is the director of Trial Advocacy at Rutgers Law School. He trains law students and attorneys throughout the U.S. and internationally. He has also trained judges, lawyers, social service agency workers, law enforcement personnel, and students in countries such as Kenya, India, Ireland, Nigeria, Tanzania, Japan, Singapore, and China. In May 2019, Professor Lore was a visiting faculty at Jilin University in Changchun, China. He also provides training to advocacy instructors and consults with law schools, universities, and government agencies, to create effective teaching programs.

Professor Lore is the co-author (with Steven Lubet) of Modern Trial Advocacy: Analysis and Practice(published by NITA and Wolters Kluwer), which is one of the leading trial advocacy books used by lawyers and students throughout the world; it is taught in over 90 U.S. law schools and has also been translated or adapted for use in Japan, Canada, Israel, Taiwan, China, and Chile.

In 2011, Professor Lore established and now directs the Center for Public Interest Training at Law School which provides free training for public interest lawyers. His commitment to teaching has been recognized by Rutgers where he has received a major teaching award each year since 2012.

Before pursuing a teaching career, Professor Lore was an assistant public defender at the Defender Association of Philadelphia and at the Cook County Public Defender’s Office in Chicago. Over the course of his career, he has litigated hundreds of trials and motions before a wide variety of courts and administrative agencies.

Professor Lore serves on several committees and boards, including the New Jersey Supreme Court Civil Practice Committee. Apart from trial advocacy, he is an expert on children’s rights and juvenile law. He has been a frequent contributor to various U.S. media outlets.

Ram Mohan

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Integrating Education and Research
Field of Study:	Education
Home Institution:	Bloomington, IL
Host Institution:	Sacred Heart College, Kochi, Kerala
Grant Start Month:	July 2025
Duration of Grant:	26 days

Brief Bio:

Professor Ram Mohan earned his BSc in chemistry from Hansraj College in Delhi, India, an MSc in organic chemistry from the University of Delhi, India, and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Maryland, Baltimore (under Professor Dale Whalen), USA. He did his postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (in Professor Robert Coates’s lab) and started his independent academic career at Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU). He is currently the Wendell and Loretta Hess Professor of Chemistry at IWU.

Professor Mohan’s research, carried out exclusively by undergraduate students, focuses on environmentally friendly organic synthesis using bismuth compounds. To date, he has supervised over 140 IWU undergraduates and published 68 manuscripts co-authored by them. He is especially committed to raising awareness about green chemistry in rural India and often travels to remote parts of India.

He is also the recipient of several awards, such as: the University of Maryland, Baltimore County 2002 Distinguished Alumni Award; the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award; the Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (St. Louis Green Chemistry Team) Green Chemistry Award; Chemist of the Year 2011 (Illinois Heartland Section of the American Chemical Society); the American Chemical Society’s Committee on Environmental Improvement Award for incorporating sustainability into chemistry education; the 2023 Kemp Award for Teaching Excellence (from IWU); and the Fulbright Teacher Scholar Award in 2012, 2019, and 2023.

Ramasamy Perumal

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Modernizing Pearl Millet Breeding in TNAU
Field of Study:	Agriculture
Home Institution:	Kansas State University   Hays, KS
Host Institution:	Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu
Grant Start Month:	May 2025
Duration of Grant:	42 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Ramasamy Perumal is the professor of sorghum and pearl millet breeding at Kansas State University. He is associated with the release of several seed and pollinator parents tolerant to drought and chilling stresses, and also with mapping such populations. He completed his PhD in plant breeding and genetics in 1993 from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India. Dr. Perumal is the recipient of several awards: the Fulbright Specialist Award (2025); the Rockefeller Foundation postdoctoral fellow award in sorghum biotechnology (1998–2000); and the senior research fellowship of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (1988–1990). He is currently serving as an adjunct faculty in four Universities: Texas A&M University, Texas; Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Tamil Nadu; SRM University, Tamil Nadu; and SKUAST-Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir. Dr. Perumal was the chief editor of a pearl millet monograph and is currently the editor of The World Millets: Crops for Food, Nutrition and Sustainability (Wiley Publishers). He is also serving as a member of the advisory committee for the compendium of sorghum diseases (third edition, a publication of the American Phytopathological Society). Dr. Perumal has published 124 research articles, 20 book chapters, 73 abstracts/posters, and six extension materials. He is also serving as a potential reviewer for 21 journals and has reviewed over 200 research manuscripts.

Alicia Rubio

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Lecture Series in Behavioral Economics
Field of Study:	Business Administration
Home Institution:	University of the Incarnate World   San Antonio, TX
Host Institution:	Uka Tarsadia University, Tarsadi, Gujarat
Grant Start Month:	June 2025
Duration of Grant:	14 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Alicia Rubio is a professor of finance at the University of the Incarnate Word’s H-E-B School of Business and Administration in San Antonio, Texas. She holds a PhD in family and consumer economics from Purdue University, an MBA in finance from ITESM Guadalajara, and a BS in actuarial sciences from Universidad Autónoma de Guadalajara. Her teaching and research focus on personal financial planning, financial well-being, financial behavior, and the intersection of cultural values and household financial behavior, with a particular emphasis on Hispanic households. Dr. Rubio has published in peer-reviewed journals and has presented her work internationally. Alongside her academic roles, she is an accredited financial counselor® and an accredited behavioral finance professional®.

Merideth M. Sellars

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Portable Museum for Innovative Education
Field of Study:	Public (Global) Health
Home Institution:	Columbus State Community College   Columbus, OH
Host Institution:	Aarupadai Veedu Medical College and Hospital, Puducherry, Puducherry
Grant Start Month:	July 2025
Duration of Grant:	31 days

Brief Bio:

Ms. Merideth Sellars, MS, is a professor in the Department of Biological and Physical Sciences at Columbus State Community College, where she has dedicated over 20 years to advancing STEM education, outreach, and student success. She has also served as the principal investigator for the Future Scientists of Ohio Scholars Program, as faculty advisor to the STEM Club, and as coordinator for STEM Community Outreach and Engagement. Currently, she leads her college’s participation in the Destination Ohio State University (DOSU) and Researcher Mentor Teacher (RMT) programs, which support student pathways into research and higher education.

Ms. Sellars has co-authored 11 interactive iBooks and three laboratory manuals in human anatomy and physiology. She has also served as her department’s distance learning lead instructor. She is an active member – and past five-year vice-chair – of the Ohio State University’s Biomedical Engineering External Advisory Council and also contributes to the STEM Industry Council’s Career Readiness Program for Columbus city schools. Additionally, she coordinates the “We Are STEM” annual event, which connects high school students to hands-on STEM experiences and career exploration opportunities.

Her commitment to teaching excellence has been recognized through multiple awards, including the Columbus State Distinguished Teaching Award (2002, 2011, and finalist in 2024) and the Outstanding Woman Leader Award (2016). Ms. Sellars is especially passionate about mentoring new faculty and championing innovative, inclusive teaching practices that foster student engagement and success.

Karan S. Surana

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Nonlinear Dynamics and Bifurcations in Classical Solids
Field of Study:	Engineering Education
Home Institution:	The University of Kansas   Lawrence, KS
Host Institution:	Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan
Grant Start Month:	May 2025
Duration of Grant:	14 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Karan Surana, born in India, received his BE in mechanical engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India, in 1965. He then attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where he obtained his MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering in 1967 and 1970, respectively. For 15 years, he worked in industry in research and development in various areas of computational mechanics and software development: SDRC, Cincinnati (1970–1973); EMRC, Detroit (1973–1978); and McDonnell-Douglas, St. Louis (1978–1984). In 1984, he joined the Department of Mechanical Engineering faculty at the University of Kansas, where he is currently the Deane E. Ackers University Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

Dr. Surana’s areas of interest and expertise are computational mathematics, computational mechanics, and continuum mechanics. He is the author of over 350 research reports, conference papers, and journal articles. He has served as advisor and chairman of 50 MS students and 25 PhD students in various areas of computational mathematics and continuum mechanics. He has delivered many plenary and keynote lectures in various national and international conferences and congresses on computational mathematics, computational mechanics, and continuum mechanics.

Dr. Surana has also served on international advisory committees of many conferences and has co-organized mini symposia on the k-version of the finite element method, computational methods, and constitutive theories at the U.S. national congresses of Computational Mechanics organized by the U.S. Association of Computational Mechanics (USACM). He has also organized a mini symposium on classical and non-classical continuum mechanics at the Society of Engineering Science (SES). He is a member of the International Association of Computational Mechanics (IACM), USACM, and SES, as well as a fellow and life member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

Dr. Surana’s most notable contributions to his field include: large deformation finite element formulations of shells; the k-version of the finite element method; operator classification and variationally consistent integral forms in methods of approximations for BVPs and IVPs; and ordered rate constitutive theories for solid and fluent continua. His present research work is on non-classical continuum theories for solid and fluent continua and associated constitutive theories. He is the author of recently published textbooks: Advanced Mechanics of Continua (CRC/Taylor & France); The Finite Element Method for Boundary Value Problems: Mathematics and Computations (CRC/Taylor & Francis); The Finite Element Method for Initial Value Problems: Mathematics and Computations (CRC/Taylor & Francis); and Numerical Methods and Methods of Approximation in Science and Engineering (CRC/Taylor & Francis).

Carsten A. Ullrich

Grant Category:	Fulbright Specialist Program
Project Title:	Time Dependent DFT and Excitonic Properties
Field of Study:	Physics Education
Home Institution:	University of Missouri   Missouri, MO
Host Institution:	Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu
Grant Start Month:	October 2025
Duration of Grant:	30 days

Brief Bio:

Dr. Carsten Ullrich is a Curators’ Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Missouri. He obtained his PhD in theoretical physics in 1995 from the University of Würzburg, Germany, under the supervision of Professor E.K.U. Gross, and subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with Professor Walter Kohn (winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Chemistry). In 2001, he joined the University of Missouri as an assistant professor; in 2007, he received tenure; and in 2013, was promoted to full professor of physics. Dr. Ullrich’s main area of research is in theoretical and computational condensed-matter physics; specifically, he is interested in describing light–matter interactions and magnetic excitations using first-principles quantum mechanical approaches. For this purpose, he develops and uses methodologies based on the density functional theory. He has authored over 120 journal publications and a textbook on time-dependent density functional theory. In 2015, he was named a fellow of the American Physical Society.