USA Fellows Year: U.S. Fellows 2024-2025

Frank Barnas

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.

John C. Lore III

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.

Merideth M. Sellars

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.

Ram Mohan

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.

Feler Bose

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.

Ramasamy Perumal

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.

Karan S. Surana

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).

 

Jeffrey P. Friedman

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.

Sonia Taneja

Dr. Sonia Taneja is a general pediatrician at Boston Medical Center and a clinical instructor at Boston University’s Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. She was most recently a chief resident at the Boston Combined Residency Program in Boston Medical Center and Boston Children’s Hospital, where she was engaged in curricular development for both domestic and global health equity education.

She holds a BA in psychology from Yale University and an MS in public health from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She is a former Parker Huang Research Fellow in India, where she conducted a mixed-methods study identifying the risk factors for mood disorders among caste-based sex workers in New Delhi and brothel-based sex workers in Kolkata and Patna. She obtained her MD from the Yale School of Medicine where she worked with the Elevate Policy Lab and the MOMS Partnership to replicate a community-based participatory research intervention for co-located social and mental health services for low-income parents.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, she is continuing her work with adolescents and families in partnership with the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh to develop a community-based participatory intervention mechanism to optimize medication-assisted therapy for opioid use disorder among adolescents in India. The goal of this research is to develop PYAR, or Parents as Youth Allies in Recovery, a family-centered behavioral intervention program designed to equip caregivers with skills to support medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and HIV prevention among young people who inject drugs (YPWID). Dr. Taneja is utilizing community-based participatory research methods to interview youth who are under-engaged or have recently ceased MOUD and their caregivers to elicit the following: knowledge and attitudes about MOUD and HIV prevention services; challenges faced by YPWID and caregivers in recovery; and the intervention components that youth and caregivers identify as most effective and acceptable.

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.