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

Michael (Donagh) Coleman

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.

Sumin Yoon

Sumin Yoon has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Rice University, Texas, with a minor in biochemistry and cell biology. Previously, he worked as a researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center and as a research coordinator at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Sumin has also conducted ethnographic research at an HIV/AIDS hospice, documenting caregiving practices for terminally ill HIV/AIDS patients. He has presented his research at national and international conferences, and was awarded the 2023 W.H.R Rivers Undergraduate Paper Prize by the Society for Medical Anthropology. While at Rice, Sumin received the Loewenstern Fellowship to collaborate with the Kiyita Family Alliance for Development and the Infectious Disease Institute in Uganda, where he helped implement a RAID (risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies) assessment of the barriers to tuberculosis care. Outside of work, Sumin enjoys reading, running, spending time with friends and family, and creative writing.

In his Fulbright-Nehru research project, Sumin is studying how the decriminalization of homosexuality in India through the repeal of Indian Penal Code Section 377 has impacted HIV care access among the queer community in Hyderabad. He is conducting participant observations and semi-structured interviews with physicians, NGOs, and people with HIV to assess the extent to which political freedom from decriminalization has translated into health equity in the field. Through his research findings, he hopes to inform global health organizations on how to better address the political and social determinants of health to curb the persisting HIV epidemic in India.

Aditya Yelamali

Aditya Yelamali holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and anthropology with a concentration in global health and environment from Washington University in St. Louis. Throughout his academic journey, he has worked on a number of pursuits that aim to utilize scientific inquiry to make a longitudinal impact on research and public health efforts. He has conducted both clinical and translational research in hematology/oncology, with a focus on exploring innovative and less toxic conditioning strategies and compounds for blood transplantation; this has resulted in several publications and presentations. Aditya also founded and leads Hearts for Arts, an organization dedicated to providing healing and arts-based activities for children in the St. Louis area; this organization has forged partnerships with various establishments throughout St. Louis to make a positive impact on hundreds of youth and pediatric patients by providing spaces for healing and interaction, and also improving mental health through trauma-informed care. Aditya’s dedication to social justice and public health extended to his work as a St. Louis Fellow Scholar with the Gephardt Institute, where he spearheaded efforts to combat HIV-related stigma. Inspired by his experiences working with frontline HIV workers, Aditya’s senior thesis delved into the intricacies of care delivery.

Aditya’s Fulbright-Nehru Research project is focusing on understanding the barriers and decision-making factors that influence adolescents seeking mental healthcare in Mysuru, Karnataka. The project is addressing the lack of dialogue on mental health between parents and adolescents, particularly in culturally sensitive contexts. In collaboration with JSS Medical College, the study is exploring parental hesitancy and gender dynamics that affect adolescent mental healthcare access. Through qualitative research involving interviews with parents, educators, and adolescents, Aditya’s project is identifying the factors that perpetuate stigma, thereby informing interventions to enhance mental health literacy. This research will contribute to global discussions on adolescent mental health disparities and promote community-based approaches toward reforms.

Alexander Williams

Alexander Williams is a joint JD–PhD student in history and law at Yale University. His research focuses on the history of corporate governance, capital markets, labor, and the legal profession in postcolonial India. He is broadly interested in global legal history, comparative private law, and the history and sociology of the legal profession. He has published in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law and the JUS GENTIUM Journal of International Legal History. He holds a BA in history and South Asian studies from Yale College.

Alexander’s Fulbright-Nehru project, “The Business of Law: Lawyers and the Economy in Modern India”, is studying the intertwined history of law, lawyers, and economic development in postcolonial India. The project is tracing how legal professionals and other actors in both the government and the private sector viewed law as a tool which could be harnessed for economic growth, the distribution of resources, and the pursuit of private ends.

Harshini Venkatachalam

Harshini Venkatachalam has a BA in computer science and visual art from Brown University. For six semesters, she was a teaching assistant in the computer science department at Brown and received a Senior Prize for contributions to the department. Harshini is broadly interested in using computing and technology for social good.

Harshini’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing technology to help learners develop computational thinking skills. Computational thinking encompasses a range of skills in problem solving and system design, with one key skill being abstraction – the ability to overcome complexity by generalizing solutions. Harshini’s project is motivated by the need to understand how novice programmers learn abstraction within the existing pedagogy and thus develop novel methods to help them learn abstraction. During her study, in the course of development of tools, data is also being collected about participant engagement. The deliverables of the project include a novel tool (a mobile application), a literature review, and a detailed report.

Samhita Vasu

Samhita Vasu graduated from Johns Hopkins Engineering on a Hodson Trust Scholarship with a BS in biomedical engineering in May 2024. She is interested in the use of microphysiological systems, medical device design, data science, and signal processing to help understand, diagnose, and treat life-threatening diseases. At Johns Hopkins, she worked on heart-on-chip assays for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) drug screening, as well as on the use of engineered heart tissues to study mitochondrial dysfunction in DMD; she also studied the neurodevelopmental outcomes of renal anhydramnios fetal therapy. Besides, she worked in Stanford’s Cardiac MRI Research Group to study cardiac MRI texture analysis for better tracking of the disease progression of DMD. As an intern for NASA Ames Research Center, she developed a spaceflight environmental data visualization tool for the Rodent Research missions to the International Space Station. Apart from research, Samhita was involved in the Johns Hopkins’ Biomedical Engineering Design Teams program, through which she designed, built, and validated various medical devices and solutions. One such project involved building a flexible arthroscope to increase visualization to the posterior compartment of the knee. Another project involved building a more precise shave biopsy device to prevent melanoma transection. She also led a team to develop a generative AI, image-based medical information translation solution for patients with low English proficiency. Samhita was the first author of an article titled “Biomaterials-based Approaches for Cardiac Regeneration” and was also awarded the Dr. Stanley Hellerstein Memorial Travel Award.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a debilitating condition that impacts around 140 million people in India. Fifty per cent of patients with CKD in India are first seen by a healthcare professional when their disease has progressed to the extent of kidney failure. Given India’s low physician-to-patient ratio, at-home monitoring can expedite diagnosis and improve treatment. In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Samhita is working with CKD specialists to design and validate a saliva-based creatinine sensor that can measure kidney function at home. The goal is to develop a working device that helps catch CKD symptoms early in at-risk patients.

Seton Uhlhorn

Seton Uhlhorn is a PhD candidate in South Asian studies at Harvard University. She received her BA with honors from the University of Texas at Austin, graduating from the rigorous Hindi-Urdu Flagship Program. Passionate about language studies, Seton works in Urdu, Hindi, and Persian. She has received numerous fellowships and grants to conduct advanced language training and archival research in India, including from the American Institute of Indian Studies and Boren Awards. Her doctoral research is on the work of the 18th-century poet and grammarian, Insha Allah Khan Insha. Currently, she serves as the teaching fellow for Hindi and Urdu and as the co-chair of the South Asian Studies Colloquium at Harvard University.

In her Fulbright-Nehru research project, Seton is studying the collected ghazals of Insha Allah Khan Insha. She is carrying out her research in Delhi, one of the historical capitals of Urdu literary culture, in affiliation with Jawaharlal Nehru University at the Centre of Indian Languages under the supervision of Professor Muhammad Asif Zahri, who specializes in pre-modern Indo-Muslim literary culture. In the modern view on Urdu literary tradition, the genre of ghazal is limited to a narrow set of themes, characters, and settings. While it is true that this set of themes forms the common generic ground across time, it fails to recognize the many attempts to expand the genre, particularly in the 18th century. Insha is perhaps the most deliberate about pushing the boundaries of the genre, garnering recognition in the early 19th century both inside and outside the royal courts. However, his contributions to Urdu literature have largely been overlooked in the last two centuries. Through her research on Insha ghazals, which employ the use of novel settings, characters, and colloquial language particular to the late 18th and early 19th centuries, she is exploring the ways in which his literary experimentations were informed by shifting political powers, an emerging middle class, and a budding cosmopolitan culture in North India.

Siya Sharma

Siya Sharma is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she studied anthropology and human biology and society. During her time at UCLA, Siya immersed herself in years-long research at the university’s medical and sociocultural anthropology departments. Under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Fessler and Dr. Abigail Bigham, she has cultivated a research niche focusing on the genome sequences present in Indian populations which contribute to metabolic disorder and lifestyle health problems. Most recently, Siya spearheaded a study of key metabolic processes and their relation to adverse health outcomes associated with the consumption of refined flour in North India. These experiences have allowed her to reconceptualize how genetics plays a key role in the dynamics between individuals and their respective health outcomes. These days, Siya is focused on Indian women’s health outcomes and is also assessing epigenetic influences using laboratory, medical survey, and participant interview methods.

As a teenager, Siya fundraised for and purchased thousands of sanitary hygiene products which she distributed in local soup kitchens, food pantries, and food drives. She has also volunteered as a medical caseworker at UCLA Health. In her spare time, Siya led her university’s poetry and spoken word program. She also served as a lead editor and creative director of UCLA’s FEM Magazine, a publication dedicated to writing about campus life through a feminist perspective.

The polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a metabolic and reproductive endocrine disorder with no known cure. Some of the highest rates of this disease are among Indian women. In India, Ayurvedic conceptualizations of the menstrual cycle regularity causes PCOS diagnosis to be perceived as an energy imbalance within the body. Siya’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is examining the ideas of health and balance for women diagnosed with PCOS and also their respective social, cultural, economic, and political conditions. While studying the social perceptions and current medical approaches to treating this disorder, Siya is proposing a two-part PCOS management model which incorporates both Ayurvedic concepts and biomedical practices.

Lalitha Shanmugasundaram

Lalitha Shanmugasundaram is a recent graduate from George Washington University (GW), where she majored in international affairs with concentrations in international development and environmental studies and a minor in mathematics. She was a member of the Elliott School Dean’s Scholars Program where she researched the intersection of gender and the environment by studying menstrual hygiene management in India. In addition to her independent research, she has worked for the Institute for International Economic Policy, The Breakthrough Institute, the Heinrich Boell Foundation, the Wilson Center, and GW Sustainability Institute, as an intern and research assistant. Her work spans across many dimensions of sustainability, including energy, food, and water. Outside of her research, Lalitha is an avid runner who competes in marathons.

Climate change has already begun affecting India, with the coastal state of Tamil Nadu experiencing drought, floods, and water scarcity. Previous research has shown that this water scarcity will not only impact the livelihoods of farmers, but also harm female sanitation needs and waste management, especially in the rural areas. With limited access to water, women in the rural and tribal areas may find it difficult to maintain proper menstrual hygiene and sanitation, leading to improper waste management. Without access to water, the core tenets of water justice also cannot be fulfilled, leading to environmental injustices. In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Lalitha is exploring how access or lack of access to water is creating issues in menstrual hygiene management and sanitation. She is also studying whether government schemes aimed at resolving sanitation and menstrual hygiene management issues are helping to alleviate some of the challenges brought on by water scarcity. Additionally, Lalitha is examining what the environmental justice repercussions are of government initiatives and water scarcity. She is also exploring the food–water–energy nexus and the impacts of climate change on this nexus through a feminist political ecology lens.

Hamsa Shanmugam

Hamsa Shanmugam completed her BA with honors from Brown University in May 2024. At Brown, she pursued a double concentration in health and human biology and music. Hamsa’s undergraduate honors thesis in ethnomusicology presented a musicological analysis of Thēvāram from a Carnatic music perspective and compared melodic frameworks between Thēvāram and Carnatic music. Her research interests are in ethnomusicology, specifically, Thēvāram, ancient Tamil music, and Carnatic music.

Hamsa is a Carnatic vocalist and violinist. She is a disciple of Dr. B. Balasubrahmaniyan and “Sangita Kalanidhi” Lalgudi Vijayalakshmi. Hamsa performs solo concerts regularly across the U.S. and India. She is the recipient of numerous prizes, scholarships, and fellowships in music. In 2022, Hamsa was the winner of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations’ Pratibha Sangam Global Carnatic Music Competition and was invited by the Indian government to give a musical tour across India.

Hamsa is the founder and co-president of Brown Bhairavi, Brown University’s premier South Asian classical music group. She has also served as the marketing lead for MIT Heritage Arts of South Asia, an organization dedicated to promoting South Asian classical art forms. Following her year in India with the Fulbright-Nehru fellowship, as part of the Program in Liberal Medical Education, the only combined BS/MD program in the Ivy League, Hamsa will matriculate to the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University to complete her MD degree.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Hamsa is conducting ethnomusicological research on Thēvāram, the Tamil devotional music of the Saiva tradition. Her research is exploring how Thēvāram concerts can be performed within the Carnatic kutcheri (concert) structures while maintaining Thēvāram’s musical and lyrical integrity; she is doing so by using undigitized musical archives and working with affiliates at Annamalai University and the Kapaleeswarar Temple. This project is set to culminate in the presentation of a full-length Thēvāram concert in the Carnatic concert format. Hamsa hopes that her work will broaden the horizons of Western musicology, enrich Carnatic music, expand Thēvāram’s reach, and allow more Tamil audiences in both Tamil Nadu and the diaspora to reconnect with this ancient musical tradition.