USA Fellows Year: U.S. Fellows 2026-2027

Sivani Manimaran

Sivani Manimaran is a graduate of the University of Michigan, from where she earned a BS in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology, alongside a minor in public policy, as well as a leadership certificate. She is deeply passionate about the intersection of medicine, global health, and engineering.

Sivani served as the president of Michigan Health Engineered for All Lives (M-HEAL), an over 300-member student organization of 12 project teams, each working to develop a low-cost healthcare prototype with a global partner. Sivani’s personal commitment to this mission was best reflected in her role as a colead of her own project team, M-HEAL: The Initiative. Collaborating and codesigning directly with physician partners in Kumasi, Ghana, for this project, she led the development of affordable neonatal incubator and kangaroo mother carrier prototypes. She traveled to Ghana twice to get direct feedback on the prototypes, engage with the local community, and understand cultural insights with the team members.

Beyond her research and global health initiatives, Sivani is a dedicated mentor. As a residential advisor for the Michigan Research and Discovery Scholars (MRADS), she has supported students to adjust to college and start research. Her experiences in M-HEAL, research, and mentorship have served as a catalyst for her passion to advance, advocate, and develop solutions with global communities.

To address the persistent challenges of babies with low birth weight in India, Sivani’s Fulbright-Nehru project is leading a mixed-methods study to improve Kangaroo Mother Care (KMC) adherence. As part of the project, she is conducting a needs assessments with NICU mothers and stakeholders to identify cultural and logistical barriers to sustained care. Leveraging these insights, she will help develop a KMC training program for providers and family-inclusive sessions that extend caregiving responsibilities. Finally, Sivani will track quantitative metrics and caregiver comfort to refine such interventions. By focusing on these community-driven interventions, her project seeks to improve outcomes for preterm infants, thereby providing a scalable model for sustainable neonatal thermoregulation and long-term health in the Indian context.

Kalyani Lawrence

Kalyani Lawrence is a 2025 graduate of Tufts University, where she studied biology and environmental studies. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of medicine, public health, environmental justice, ecology, and (de)colonial studies. She is committed to producing culturally sensitive work that directly benefits the communities she engages with.

During her undergraduate years, Kalyani sought avenues to unite her interests in health and medicine with a burgeoning passion for environmental justice. She became involved in local and global environmental health initiatives, leading a Human and Environmental Health team at the Tufts Office of Sustainability and performing research for the NGO 1for3 which contributed to the development of food sovereignty and Well Child Health programs in a West Bank refugee camp.

Kalyani has accumulated over 5,000 hours of clinical experience ranging from emergency medicine in Boston to reconstructive surgery and rural medicine in Maharashtra. Through these stints, she has become intent on bringing an approach to healthcare that is culturally relevant, based on justice, and grounded in systems thinking.

Kalyani’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is focusing on Adivasi subsistence farmers in a drought-prone region of Maharashtra. Recognizing that shifting environmental and sociocultural pressures influence the conditions required to sustain health, and that such changes produce complexities difficult to capture in medicalized frameworks, her work is exploring the ways that this community understands and relates environmental changes to their health and well-being. Her research is following a community-focused approach in an attempt to better represent the nuances of local realities. This project aspires to contribute to the preservation and elevation of local knowledge, support advocacy efforts, and provide context-specific data which can inform action.

Lara Lashus

Lara Lashus graduated from Trinity University with a BA in sociology and international studies (global health), and a concentration in gender and sexuality studies. Her interdisciplinary work focused on identity construction and relationships between gender, health, illness, and postcolonial development. In her senior year, she won the C. Wright Mills Award for outstanding achievement in sociology. She also earned departmental honors for her published thesis, “Hijra Subjectivity, Gender Affirmative Care, and the Will to Verify: A Case Study in Confirmation Desire”. The thesis, using a post-structuralist lens, investigates how colonial and state capture of the hijra identity produced arenas of suspicion and verification, thereby shaping questions of safety, authority, and authenticity for the hijra amidst new medical and socio-legal developments. This work was based on the qualitative research she conducted while studying abroad in India during her junior year. Additionally, she has studied in Paraguay, where she worked to uplift the political and environmental rights of the indigenous Guaraní. She has also researched family planning access in the rural parts of eastern Uganda through a Yale fellowship program, and is a co-author of its findings published in Health & Place.

Lara is passionate about fighting for the dignified and equitable treatment of all. She has worked closely with local organizers to collaborate with student activists, leading coalitions for reproductive justice, and as a harm reduction intern serving the impoverished and unhoused communities of San Antonio. She won grants such as the John Donahue Award for Social Justice to complete this work. For the past four years, she has been working as a research assistant to sociology professors Dr. Amanda Hernandez and Dr. Amy Stone on various projects, primarily analyzing LGBTQ youth experiences.

With her Fulbright-Nehru award, Lara is studying cultural and climatic shifts related to the business, harvest, and use of native plants for medicinal purposes in the rural Himalayan regions. Her research is also seeking answers to how different practitioners perceive and navigate cultural barriers to care in these regions, given the shifting structural and environmental constraints. Further, she is studying the role of herbal medicine in the lives of local women and the growing market for medicinal agriculture within the international economy.

Daniel Lapinski

Daniel Lapinski is a fifth-year PhD candidate in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. He has an MA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BA from the University of Chicago. His research focuses on the history and languages of Northeast India, with an emphasis on the development of modern Manipur and on Meitei linguistics and literature.

Daniel’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the linguistics and language politics in Manipur during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is investigating how various actors (academics, officials, artists) conceptualized and presented the Meitei (or Manipuri) language at different historical moments and how these framings influenced its current position within the linguistic and political landscape of India. By tracing this discourse through the institutions and intellectual products of colonial and postcolonial India, the project seeks to elucidate the concerns and material factors that have helped shape Manipur, and the Northeast more generally, as a sociocultural space.

Lasya Kandukuri

Lasya Kandukuri is an honors graduate of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where she earned a BS in neuroscience, with minors in chemistry and creative writing. Having completed over 300 hours of emergency medical technician training, she is EMT certified in the state of North Carolina. As a research assistant with UNC Neurology’s Dementia with Lewy Bodies Consortium, she has managed large public health datasets, contributing to novel research in understanding symptom progression within the disease, and presented at both the 2026 Celebration of Undergraduate Research at UNC as well as the 4th Annual Symposium for Learning about Alzheimer’s disease-related Medical Research at Duke and UNC (SLAM-DUNC). She has also accumulated over 900 hours as a healthcare provider through her work as an EMT, as an overnight caretaker through CareYaya, and as an intern at Jaipur’s Aarogyam Hospital and its affiliated slum clinic. As the president of the Union County EMS Explorers Program in 2021, Lasya mentored peers interested in emergency medicine through educational workshops and ambulance ride-alongs. Further, as the president of UNC MEDLIFE from 2023 to 2025, she led volunteer initiatives with students and hosted fundraising campaigns for medical aid and education in underserved communities. As a recipient of the 2024 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, she completed an eight-week intensive Hindi program at the American Institute of Indian Studies in Jaipur, Rajasthan, where she achieved near-native fluency in the language. Her clinical, research, and leadership experiences have equipped her to navigate complex team dynamics, manage multifaceted projects, and practice collaboration with empathy in service-oriented work. In the long term, she sees herself as a researcher and professor who encourages student inquiry into global health systems, advances accessibility in emergency care, and amplifies the voices of those in need.

Lasya’s Fulbright-Nehru research is investigating how geography and socioeconomic factors impact 108 Ambulance Service response times and thus patient outcomes across urban and peri-urban regions of Jaipur. In collaboration with IIHMR’s Dr. Seema Mehta, she is using multivariable regression and GIS mapping on anonymized EMS datasets to identify predictors of delays, along with a deprivation index constructed from census indicators to capture socioeconomic variation. She is also conducting interviews with first responders, hospital providers, researchers, and policy experts to gather insights into potential strategies for intervention, and analyzing patterns in order to minimize delays and mortality rates.

Ananya Kamalakannan

Ananya Kamalakannan is a 2026 graduate from the Ohio State University, where she earned her BS in systems and behavioral neuroscience, with minors in medical humanities and global public health. Her academic and professional work centers on mental health equity, medical education, and the social determinants of health. As part of her honors undergraduate thesis, she conducted research on mental health trends among medical students by analyzing national datasets to investigate disparities in various mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance use, self-injurious behaviors, and suicidality.

Beyond research, Ananya is deeply involved in community engagement and student leadership. She was a Morrill Scholar at Ohio State and a recipient of the Kaplan Humanitarian Award, accolades that reflected her sustained leadership skills across civic and cultural organizations. She has also served as the president of Global Medical Brigades (a student-led volunteer organization that implements sustainable health systems), Red Saree (a nonprofit focused on health equity and awareness), and Tamil Sangam (a cultural outfit that preserves and promotes Tamil cultural heritage). Throughout her undergraduate career, Ananya was deeply engaged with South Asian communities across both the United States and India; during this time, she led mental wellness workshops for youth through Snehalaya, an NGO supporting women and children affected by poverty and HIV/AIDS, based in Ahmednagar, India.

A classically trained Indian dancer, and visual artist, Ananya is passionate about fostering cross-cultural dialogue through both public health and the arts. She hopes to become a physician-researcher focused on global mental health, medical education reform, and developing culturally grounded approaches to student well-being.

Ananya’s Fulbright-Nehru project involves a mixed-methods study examining the mental health of Indian medical students hosted at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences (NIMHANS) in Bengaluru. The project is investigating how academic pressures and structural inequalities shape student mental health outcomes and treatment utilization. Drawing on her epidemiological research at Ohio State, Ananya is adapting validated survey instruments to the Indian context and conducting qualitative interviews with the students and faculty. She hopes to translate the findings into culturally grounded policy recommendations to improve institutional support systems and foster a generation of medical providers who embrace mental health as a priority.

Neeraj Kadubandi

Neeraj Kadubandi is a recent graduate from Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a bachelor’s in public health. He is passionate about the intersection of substance use disorders and concurrent complications, including mental health disorders. His work focuses on addressing barriers to care and expanding access to behavioral health services. During his undergraduate years, Neeraj conducted research on the remote assessment of patients with psychiatric conditions and constructed a novel catatonia rating instrument, the feasibility of which was evaluated across diverse motor profiles. By comparing methadone clinics with a hypothetical community pharmacy setting, he also investigated how stigma around medication for opioid use disorder is influenced by the dispensing location. For his work, Neeraj received the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award; the work was also presented at the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders and the National Network of Depression Centers.

As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar in India, Neeraj is exploring how stigma around alcohol use disorder and co-occurring mental health illness intersect to deter patients from seeking behavioral health services. In collaboration with the Government Hospital for Mental Care, Visakhapatnam, he is employing a mixed-methods approach to study the local community and generate evidence-based strategies to strengthen mental health and addiction services, as well as to inform policy initiatives.

Urja Joshi

Urja Joshi is a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where she earned a master’s degree in South Asian studies. She earned her BA in history and religion at the University of North Texas, where she also presented and published her undergraduate thesis, “Hindu Mythology Is Not Mythology: The Philosophy of the Puranas”. She spent part of her childhood in India and grew up in a South Asian diaspora community – both these experiences shaped her early interest in South Asia’s cultural and religious diversity.

Her academic work centers on South Asian religious traditions, with particular focus on narrative traditions, indigenous theoretical frameworks, and visual and material sources. She is especially interested in how religious narratives are shaped and reinterpreted across textual and artistic traditions, and how South Asian theoretical frameworks can be applied to religious studies and art history. Her research also pays particular attention to Sanskrit literature and aesthetic theory, especially the concept of rasa and its role in shaping interpretations of narrative traditions such as the Ramayana. Urja was awarded a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship through which she pursued Hindi language training; she also attended a summer study program in India through the American Institute of Indian Studies.

Urja’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining the intersection of visual and textual representations of Hindu religious narratives. Through site-specific research in Rajasthan, India, the project is focusing on artistic depictions, particularly temple carvings and early modern Rajasthani/Mewar paintings, and how they intersect with and challenge textual traditions. With the help of comparative analysis, Urja is also exploring how visual representation reshapes interpretive possibilities that are beyond textual description. The research is foregrounding understudied deities while simultaneously reexamining established narratives. By situating visual and textual traditions together, her research contributes to broader understandings of Hinduism and advances scholarship in South Asian art history and religious studies.

Sarah Jacob

Sarah Jacob is a public policy researcher whose work has involved labor, migration, gendered violence, and public economics. She recently graduated from Georgia State University with a master’s in public policy. While attending graduate school, she served as a graduate research assistant and learned hard and soft skills pertaining to community needs assessments and qualitative and quantitative program evaluation. She earned her undergraduate degree from Brandeis University, where she studied economics, with minors in philosophy and legal studies. Her academic background has shaped her commitment to equity-driven research and marginalized communities.

Professionally, Sarah has worked across multiple U.S. states as a community organizer, labor advocate, and social service provider. She worked for the Georgia House minority leader as a policy assistant in 2026, flagging harmful legislation and conducting public policy research to guide legislative decision-making. In Chicago during 2022–2024, she built and led a home energy campaign in Rogers Park, during which she developed relationships with diverse communities through street-level engagement and also provided domestic violence prevention training to Asian communities.

Beyond her academic and professional pursuits, Sarah is an avid reader, a lover of history, and an active participant in community organizing. Her lived experiences across many U.S. cities, combined with her deep personal ties to India, shape her interest in fostering cross-cultural dialogue, public scholarship, and long-term engagement with global labor issues.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Sarah is studying labor welfare in the gig economy of Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, where she is examining how India’s shift toward market-driven growth has reshaped work structures. Through an affiliation with the Centre for Development Studies (CDS), she is conducting semi-structured interviews with platform workers, managers, and stakeholders, supported by a Malayalam-speaking research assistant. Her research is integrating qualitative fieldwork with existing CDS data to analyze issues such as worker security, dignity, and “decent work” conditions. The project aims to contribute to global labor policy conversations and strengthen academic exchanges between the U.S. and India.

Safwan Islam

Safwan Islam is a first-generation college student and a recent graduate from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he received a BA in public health (with honors) and a BA in biology. As a part of his senior honors thesis, Safwan conducted an original grant-funded pilot study exploring the occupational health risks among gas station workers in the United States.

During his time at Brown, Safwan was the founding president of the Bengali Students’ Association (BSA) which has the goal of building a sense of community among the Bengali diaspora on the campus and its neighborhood. Among the 450 student groups at Brown, BSA was recognized by Brown as the Student Group of the Year in 2024. Safwan’s leadership extended beyond BSA and into student government, where he was elected by the student body as one of the 12 members of the Undergraduate Finance Board (UFB) to collectively manage a fund worth USD 2.1 million for activities of the campus student groups. Safwan is also highly involved in community health work, where he has served as a volunteer and assistant project manager for various projects at a free clinic in Providence.

Beyond academics, leadership, and public health work, Safwan spends a significant amount of time weightlifting, learning about new exercises, and applying exercise physiology to improve his workouts.

Safwan’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is examining how adults aged 18 to 65 diagnosed with hypertension in Delhi perceive the link between air pollution and hypertension, and how those perceptions shape adoption of protective or preventive behaviors. Using focus group discussions and in-depth interviews stratified by age and gender, the project is conducting a four-phase qualitative study affiliated with Ashoka University under the supervision of Dr. Poornima Prabhakaran. Safwan plans to disseminate the findings of the study in various languages through academic seminars, community sessions, and a policy brief aimed at informing counseling and prevention strategies both in India and the United States.