Meet Our USA Fulbrighters Archive

Amol Yadav

Dr. Amol Yadav is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Lampe Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina (UNC) – Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University – with affiliations in neurosurgery and neuroscience at the UNC School of Medicine. He is a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist by training. After obtaining his PhD in biomedical engineering from Duke University under the mentorship of Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, Dr. Yadav honed his expertise through advanced postdoctoral training in neurobiology and neurosurgery at Duke. This propelled him to establish the Brain-Spine-Machine Interfaces Lab at UNC. His laboratory’s research is interdisciplinary in its approach, merging techniques and concepts from brain-machine interfaces with spinal neuromodulation to innovate in the field of neuroengineering. Dr. Yadav works closely with surgeons and clinicians to adapt new therapies tested in preclinical animal models into clinical applications for patients suffering from sensorimotor loss due to neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, spinal cord injury, and stroke. He is the principal investigator of several ongoing preclinical studies and clinical trials at UNC. His research efforts have been recognized with several accolades, including the NIH Director’s New Innovator Award, the NIH K12 Early Career Investigator Award, the Duke Germinator Research Award, and the UNC Junior Faculty Development Award. In addition to leading an active research group, Dr. Yadav tutors undergraduate and graduate students at UNC on brain-machine interfaces and human physiology.

Dr. Yadav’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing clinical protocols and tools for brain-computer interface (BCI) and neuromodulation trials for the Indian patient population, in collaboration with scientists, engineers, and clinicians at IIT Delhi and AIIMS Delhi. The expected outcomes of the project include a research protocol for BCI and neuromodulation trials for sensorimotor rehabilitation, regulatory filings, clinical metrics to evaluate musculoskeletal function, Indian context-specific computational tools and algorithms, and collaborative manuscript/grant submissions.

Rebecca Whittington

Dr. Rebecca Whittington is a scholar, literary translator, and instructor of Bangla, Tamil, and Hindi-Urdu. Her research and translation interests center on the intersections of linguistic diversity, social justice, and the environment in modern and contemporary South Asian literatures. She holds a PhD in South and Southeast Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley (2019), and an MA in TESOL from San Francisco State University (2025). Her translations include the memoir Daughter of the Agunmukha by Noorjahan Bose (Hurst, 2023), the novel Malloban by Bangla modernist writer Jibanananda Das (Penguin India, 2022), and the poetry and prose anthology Time Will Write a Song for You: Contemporary Tamil Writing from Sri Lanka (Penguin India, 2014). She is currently working on a monograph and on several translation projects from Hindi, Bangla, and Tamil.

Dr. Whittington’s Fulbright-Nehru project is producing a critical anthology of translations of Adivasi writing from eastern India, in collaboration with writer/scholar Vandana Tete. For this, she is researching Adivasi writings from Jharkhand and West Bengal, translated into Hindi and Bangla from Adivasi languages. She is also translating texts in Hindi as well as working with the authors or bilingual co-translators on works written in Adivasi languages.

Kamini Singha

Dr. Kamini Singha is a university distinguished professor and the associate dean for Research and Faculty Affairs in Earth and Society Programs at the Colorado School of Mines. A groundwater hydrologist with over 20 years of research experience, she leads one of the premier hydrogeophysics research groups in the United States. In over 130 peer-reviewed publications, her work explores the complex interactions between water, geology, and biology, specifically focusing on subsurface controls on ecohydrological function and the role of groundwater within “critical zone” systems – the vital layer of the Earth stretching from treetops to the base of aquifers. Notably, Dr. Singha’s research was the first to use geophysics to address a fundamental controversy in hydrology: the trapping of solute mass in dead-end porosity. This discovery has implications for understanding contaminant transport, self-remediation of streams, and tree water uptake.

An internationally recognized leader, Dr. Singha is a fellow of both the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and the Geological Society of America (GSA). Her contributions have been honored with prestigious invitations, including as the National Groundwater Association’s Darcy Lecturer, in which capacity she gave 81 talks across the globe in 2017, and as the AGU Witherspoon Lecturer in 2022. She is also an editor with Water Resources Research.

Beyond her research, Dr. Singha is a celebrated educator committed to mentoring the next generation of scientists. She has received numerous teaching accolades, including Penn State’s George W. Atherton Award and the Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award from the Colorado School of Mines.

Dr. Singha earned her BS in geophysics from the University of Connecticut and her PhD in hydrogeology from Stanford University. Her current work in Himachal Pradesh, India, carries deep personal significance, as she is studying the landscape and orchards of her father’s family to contribute to its environmental resilience.

Prof. Singha’s Fulbright-Nehru project aims to enhance apple-production resilience in Himachal Pradesh through data-driven strategies. Partnering with the historic Stokes Heritage Apple Orchards – the birthplace of commercial apple cultivation in the region – and IIT Mandi, the project is addressing the decline in productivity caused by rising temperatures and decreasing snow cover. Prof. Singha’s research is integrating new ground-based instrumentation, historical records, and remote-sensing data to model hydrologic controls like soil moisture and snowmelt. Ultimately, this initiative seeks to provide actionable insights for precision irrigation and management.

Arunima Singh

Prof. Arunima Singh is an associate professor of physics and a graduate faculty member in the Materials Science and Engineering program at Arizona State University. She received her PhD from Cornell University and held postdoctoral appointments at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Prof. Singh has received notable accolades, including the Department of Energy Early Career Research Program Award, The Mineral, Metal, and Materials Society (TMS) Young Leaders Professional Development Award, and the Department of Defense Faculty Fellowship. Her research integrates first-principles computational methods and artificial intelligence to accelerate materials discovery, synthesis, and applications, with an emphasis on understanding and controlling physical phenomena at the surfaces and interfaces of materials.

Prof. Singh’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is focusing on accelerating the discovery of quantum–semiconductor material heterostructures for the next-generation spintronic, neuromorphic, sensing, and topological devices. By combining machine learning, high-throughput first-principles simulations, and molecular beam epitaxy, the project is designing and fabricating atomically precise interfaces with controllable electronic properties. This integrated approach is expected to reveal the fundamental rules governing the complex interfaces in quantum–semiconductor heterostructures, establish advanced growth protocols through advanced synthesis methods, and lead to stable materials platforms for energy-efficient and scalable quantum technologies.

Sudev Sheth

Dr. Sudev Sheth is a senior lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, where he holds a joint appointment in the Department of History and the Lauder Institute at the Wharton School. His research and teaching sit at the intersection of economic history, urban studies, and global business, with a particular focus on South Asia.

He received his PhD in history and South Asia studies from the University of Pennsylvania, following an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University and undergraduate degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining Penn, he was the Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History at Harvard Business School.

Dr. Sheth is the author of Bankrolling Empire: Family Fortunes and Political Transformation in Mughal India (Cambridge University Press, 2024), which examines how merchant families shaped political authority during a period of imperial decline. His broader body of work explores the role of business actors in shaping institutions, governance, and social life across time. His research has appeared in leading journals such as Business History Review, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, and Manuscript Studies. He has also written for public-facing platforms such as Scroll and the Wire.

At Penn, Dr. Sheth teaches courses such as “Global Business through the Humanities” and “The City Paradox: Design, Innovation, and Leadership”, which examine how ideas, markets, and institutions have shaped the modern world. His teaching has been recognized for its interdisciplinary approach and engagement with global perspectives.

Dr. Sheth’s Fulbright-Nehru project, “Ahmedabad’s Architects: Merchant Capitalism and Shaping a City across Seven Centuries”, is investigating how business communities have shaped urban development, governance, and architecture in one of India’s most dynamic cities. Drawing on archival research, oral histories, and analysis of the built environment, the project is tracing how business families developed institutions for credit, governance, and civic life which linked the city of Ahmedabad to regional and global networks. By foregrounding business-led forms of urban transformation, the study is attempting to offer new perspectives on capitalism, development, and the relationship between economic power and civic authority.

Matthew Sheridan

Mr. Matthew Sheridan is a Los Angeles-based abstract artist who is constantly learning from global philosophies while working toward animating the blind spots in the collective reality of humankind. His non-objective paintings and animations generate worlds of plug-and-play constructivist expressionism where his work’s meaning comes from its actions on paper and canvas, as well as via in situ video projections.

A BFA from New York University and an MFA from California’s ArtCenter College of Design, Mr. Sheridan has held 13 solo exhibitions to date. His video has been screened in two Olympic Games and his work has been exhibited in museums like Centre Pompidou and Jeu de Paume in Paris, and CICA in South Korea.

Mr. Sheridan has participated in artist residencies such as Fountainhead in Miami, Instituto Sacatar in Brazil, and La Napoule Art Foundation in France. He has also won grants and residencies, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; an audiovisual grant from the secretary of culture of Bahia, Brazil; a Paradise AIR Residency sponsored by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunka-cho); and three UCLA faculty development grants.

In the summer of 2025, Mr. Sheridan collaborated with visual artist Vishwa Shroff, architect Katsushi Goto, and philosopher Rohit Goel on a series of short, animated, live-mixed architectural video projections in Mumbai and Vadodara, India. This was followed in autumn 2025 by a solo exhibition in CDMX, Mexico, called Destino Floreciente; there, he premiered a new bespoke work for Mexico City entitled Doom In Bloom. His work is part of collections in America, France, and Australia.

Mr. Sheridan has taught at NYU/Tisch in New York and Singapore, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and at UCLA’s Geffen Academy in Los Angeles.

Mr. Sheridan’s Fulbright-Nehru project, “Elephants in the Room”, is a multidisciplinary collaboration between two visual artists, an architect, and a philosopher who theorize, then visualize, about intersections between eastern, western, and global philosophies, to expand beyond the sensory limitations of contemporary “society of the spectacle”. It is employing the Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art) approach for the deliverables, including drawing, painting, installation-based animated architectural projections, live-mixed video, exploratory music and audio with experimental documentary, and narrative cinema. Essentially, this collaborative project is reconceiving architecture/built form as a fluid interface in an attempt to animate the blind spots in humankind’s shared reality.

Sashi Satpathy

Prof. Sashi Satpathy obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1982, his MSc from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1977, and his BSc from Utkal University, India. After several years of postdoctoral work at the Max Planck Institute, Stuttgart, and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, California, he joined the physics department at the University of Missouri, Columbia, in 1987 as an assistant professor, where he is currently a curators’ distinguished professor of physics. Prof. Satpathy’s research area is theoretical condensed matter physics. He has over 150 publications in scientific journals and has mentored about 20 doctoral and postdoctoral scholars over his career. Well known for a number of seminal contributions to the electronic structure theory of solids as well as to the photonic band structure, Prof. Satpathy uses both numerical and analytical tools to study contemporary problems in condensed matter physics. Recent examples are strong spin-orbit coupled systems, orbital Hall and spin Hall effects, and the physics of the skyrmions. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Physics, London.

Carrying information using spin and orbital transport, as opposed to the standard charge transport, is an emerging area of research in condensed matter physics, which has the potential to revolutionize future electronics. Prof. Satpathy’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing a fundamental understanding about orbital transport, specifically about the orbital Hall effect, which involves transport of orbital moments. Toward this, theoretical models are being developed and the results are being validated through calculations based on the density functional theory.

Paromita Sanyal

Prof. Paromita Sanyal is a professor of sociology at Florida State University. She holds a PhD in sociology from Harvard University, an MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and a BA from Presidency College, Kolkata.

Prof. Sanyal’s research lies at the intersection of economic sociology, development, deliberative democracy, and gender, with a sustained focus on how people living under conditions of structural inequality pursue agency, mobility, and collective power. Her work spans the Global South and the United States, examining microfinance and women’s empowerment in rural India, self-help groups and gender justice in India, household debt and financial precarity among working-class households in urban India, and platform labor and its consequences in India and the U.S. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in India.

She is the author/co-author of several books with Cambridge University Press: Credit to Capabilities: A Sociological Study of Microcredit Groups in India (2014), which won the American Sociological Association’s Outstanding Book Award in the Sociology of Development category; Oral Democracy: Deliberation in Indian Village Assemblies (2019); and Revolution by Stealth: How Women’s Groups Catalyzed a Cultural Transformation in Bihar. Another book, Rethinking Credit: Shaping Solutions to Social Problems, is currently under preparation.

Prof. Sanyal has held faculty positions at Cornell University and Wesleyan University, and has collaborated on research funded by the Social Science Research Council, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, and the Gates Foundation, among others. For over a decade, she was a research consultant to the World Bank’s Development Research Group. She has also presented her research at the United Nations, the World Bank, and major international scholarly venues.

Prof. Sanyal’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating how low-income communities in India are experiencing the digital transformation of finance, with the focus being on digital payment systems and AI-enabled credit. India, the world’s fastest-growing fintech market, offers a critical site for understanding the opportunities and challenges of technology-driven financial inclusion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, the study is examining how low-income publics adopt, adapt to, or resist digital financial tools, and how their responses are shaped by social, infrastructural, and moral–economic contexts. The research is bridging scholarship on financial practices and technological innovation, while informing policy by highlighting barriers to adoption, risks of exclusion, and strategies for ethical fintech design.

Sindhuja Sankaran

Dr. Sindhuja Sankaran is a professor in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering at Washington State University (WSU). Her research is in the nascent and evolving field of phenomics, which involves the design, development, integration, testing, and deployment of a range of cutting-edge sensor technologies to advance crop phenotype monitoring – an important component of plant breeding, crop science, and precision agriculture research and applications. The sensor technologies are used for automated, non-invasive, rapid, and continuous monitoring of plant responses to the environment and abiotic and biotic stressors on a scale previously unattainable, and contribute to addressing pressing challenges in global food security and sustainable agriculture.

Dr. Sankaran has published over 110 peer-reviewed articles and has given over 95 outreach talks. She has been successful in securing internal and external competitive grants worth USD 33 million (with USD 4.2 million going into her program), mostly from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) programs. She leads the USDA-NIFA Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates project on research and extension partnership for accelerated technology adoption and resilient agricultural systems.

Dr. Sankaran is an active member of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE), the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB), and the North American Plant Phenotyping Network (NAPPN). She is an associate Editor of the Plant Phenome Journal and Computers and Electronics in Agriculture. She is a recipient of the Early Career Excellence Award from the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences at WSU, the Outstanding Associate Editor award from ASABE’s Plant Phenome Journal, an ASABE Leadership Citation, and an International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) Medal, among others.

Phenomics refers to multidimensional phenotyping through sensing and automation to facilitate objective and quantitative assessment of crop responses. This aids in the critical process used for selecting stress-tolerant, high-performing crop varieties, cultivars, and hybrids in crop breeding programs, which is one of the key strategies in addressing issues related to food security. Dr. Sankaran’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing phenomics-enabled decision support tools for understanding plant physiology in order to enhance the development of germplasms. Her project in India of facilitating the development and applications of phenomics tools will also benefit crop breeding programs in the U.S. and worldwide.

Lenore Rinder

Ms. Lenore Rinder is an independent filmmaker based in the United States. She holds an MFA degree in film/painting from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has worked as a photojournalist for newspapers in Wisconsin and Idaho, and as a staff photographer for the Ballet Folk of Moscow, a touring dance company based in Idaho. She has taught film, animation, and painting at UW-Milwaukee, and was also a producer-director with Time Warner Cable’s Community Television. For 12 years, she worked as a visual communications instructor for incarcerated teenagers at the Ethan Allen School for Boys, through Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections.

In 2013, fueled by her passion for wildlife conservation, she began to make documentaries on the subject, with a focus on the marginalized indigenous communities in India. Using the video as a lens to examine the impact of environmental degradation and animal extinction on humans, she has been exploring the intersection between nature conservation and social justice issues. Her short films feature: a covert cottage industry of fake tiger skin artisans; poachers finding alternative income catching and releasing urban monkeys; a family-run craft cooperative adjacent to a tiger park in Rajasthan; and an elephant sanctuary camp in Dubare, Karnataka. As a visual artist who paints and creates animation, Ms. Lenore weaves digital images into her live action documentary footage.

Her films have been screened at several international festivals, such as Ethnografilm Paris, the Athvikvaruni International Film Festival in Tamil Nadu, and the Rome Prisma Independent Film Awards. Her film, Kagaraja, was a winner at the Tagore International Film Festival, Bolpur, India, in 2021. Ms. Lenore has received three grants from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund. In 2019, the Indian Institute of World Culture invited her to screen her documentary, People of the Wild Tiger. In 2025, her four documentaries had their world premiere in Bengaluru.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Lenore is making a documentary titled “Kids for Tigers, Designing Their Future”. That will be the culmination of 13 years of research, working with nature guides, villagers, and educators. Through the project, she is also continuing to film the children who are part of an educational program called Kids for Tigers. Besides, she is engaging with students at the Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where she is facilitating communication between Indian and American students on art, conservation, and culture.