Meet Our USA Fulbrighters Archive

Dakota Gearhart

Ms. Dakota Gearhart is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York. Her artwork examines the environment and how it is perceived. She is the creator of a collaborative animated series called Life Touching Life that invites scientists, researchers, and caretakers to share observations on consciousness and its relationship to biodiversity. Her work has been supported by the New Museum, United States Artists, Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, Franklin Furnace, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and more. She teaches as a visiting faculty at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

Ms. Gearhart’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is developing a collaborative animated video series called Animating Ecology exploring India’s ecological knowledge through folk art, music, and storytelling. Working with Indian scholars, artists, and musicians, she is cocreating four episodes inspired by the Sundarbans, Western Ghats, Thar Desert, and Khangchendzonga by integrating regional artistic traditions. She is also conducting workshops and making public presentations. The project culminates in screening tours in India and New York aimed at advancing cultural exchange, collective education, and Fulbright’s mission of international understanding.

Nathan Miller

Dr. Nate Miller is a global health researcher and advisor with over 20 years of experience designing, implementing, and evaluating community health programs across Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. He holds a PhD in international health from Johns Hopkins University and master’s degrees in public health and international affairs from Columbia University.

At UNICEF, where he served as global lead for community health in emergencies from 2014 to 2024, Dr. Miller led an eight-country research initiative documenting how community health workers function in humanitarian settings, generating evidence that has informed global humanitarian health policy and practice. He also led the development of South Sudan’s national community health strategy, the Boma Health Initiative, now serving eight million people, and developed Somalia’s national community health worker program guidelines for the World Bank. He has held research and faculty roles at Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University, and has worked with Save the Children, USAID, and WHO. He is the author of 24 peer-reviewed publications on community health systems, implementation science, and health in humanitarian settings, including a 2026 paper in the Lancet Primary Care on building community health worker systems ready for AI integration.

For the past two years, Dr. Miller has focused on practical AI applications in global health, advising and training organizations, including WHO, Georgetown University, and George Washington University. He founded The AI & Global Health Hub, a resource platform for global health professionals, and is leading a literature review on AI in community health worker programs.

Dr. Miller’s Fulbright Global Scholar project is a five-month comparative study across Kenya, Rwanda, and India, three countries at the forefront of integrating AI into community health worker programs. Through direct observation of health workers using AI tools, key informant interviews with those who design and run these health worker programs, and stakeholder workshops, he is documenting which implementation practices transfer across health systems and which require local adaptation, with the aim to produce open-access guidance for program managers and policymakers worldwide.

Supriya Mahajan

Dr. Supriya Mahajan is an associate professor (with tenure) in the Department of Medicine, Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, at Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo (UB), New York. She also holds adjunct appointments in biomedical informatics and chemical and biological engineering and serves as director of research for the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology. Dr. Mahajan earned her PhD in endocrinology and metabolism from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi, and later completed her MPH in global health and epidemiology from the University at Buffalo. She completed her postdoctoral training at Case Western Reserve University and UB, specializing in endocrinology, metabolism, immunology, and translational biomedical research. Over the course of more than three decades, Dr. Mahajan has developed an internationally recognized research program spanning immunology, neuroinflammation, microbiome science, infectious diseases, nanomedicine, public health, and translational medicine. Her work focuses on understanding microbial communities, inflammation, immune dysfunction, and chronic diseases, with particular emphasis on HIV-associated comorbidities, neurodegenerative disorders, and precision medicine approaches. She has served as principal investigator, coinvestigator, and mentor on numerous NIH research projects and has contributed extensively to interdisciplinary collaborations across the United States and internationally.

Dr. Mahajan has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications, nine book chapters, over 95 scientific abstracts, and holds a U.S. patent. Her scholarly contributions have garnered more than 9,400 citations, with an h-index of 52. She has served on numerous NIH, NSF, and the U.S. Department of Defense review panels and is an active member of several professional societies. A dedicated educator and mentor, she teaches graduate-level courses in microbiome informatics, metagenomics informatics, and public health informatics. Her current interests include microbiome-host interactions, neuroinflammation, precision public health, bioinformatics, global health, and the development of innovative technologies for disease detection, prevention, and treatment.

Dr. Mahajan’s Fulbright Global Scholar project is advancing international collaboration to address global water challenges through AI‑driven analysis of chemical and microbial data. As the principal investigator, she is leading a multidisciplinary team in partnership with IIT Bombay, the University of Sydney, and the University of the Western Cape to develop and field‑test an integrated optics-based automated water‑quality sensing platform across diverse sites in India, Australia, and South Africa. The project aims to strengthen global academic partnerships, build research capacity, and deliver a scalable real‑time monitoring framework to inform water‑safety policies and enhance infrastructure resilience worldwide.

Kizil Yusoof

Kizil Yusoof is a doctoral student working under the supervision of Dr. Purnima Madhivanan in the Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at the University of Arizona. Kizil earned an MS in immunology and infection from UT Health San Antonio in 2018. Her graduate research focused on the development of point-of-care diagnostics for drug-resistant tuberculosis. Following her master’s degree, Kizil continued working in biomedical research, investigating the neuroimmune mechanisms of chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain.

In 2024, Kizil transitioned into the field of public health where her research interests expanded to cancer prevention, health promotion, and epidemiology. Her current work focuses on understanding the prevention of cervical cancer through community-centered and population health approaches, with an emphasis on improving awareness, access, and preventive care.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Kizil is examining the influence of religious and cultural beliefs on cervical cancer prevention and HPV vaccine decision-making in the urban communities of Mysuru, India. Specifically, she is using a community-based participatory research approach, including focus group discussions and photovoice, to understand how cultural and religious values impact attitudes toward cervical cancer prevention and vaccine uptake. The study is being conducted in collaboration with the JSS Academy of Higher Education and Research and the Public Health Research Institute of India, an NIH training site for global health research. The overall goal is to deploy culturally relevant strategies to improve HPV vaccine rollout and uptake in order to address the 2030 WHO strategic target of eliminating cervical cancer.

Shreeya Yarlagadda

Shreeya Yarlagadda is a recent graduate from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where she earned a BS honors in neuroscience and psychology, with a minor in medicine, literature, and culture. During her time at UNC, Shreeya was an Accelerated Research Scholar and conducted research across multiple settings, including the Neurocognition and Imaging Research Lab, the Department of Radiation Oncology at UNC Health, and the THRIVE Clinic. She completed her honors thesis on the safety of re-irradiation for high-grade gliomas, and continues to be passionate about the intersection of the humanities and sciences, with a particular focus on quality of life and palliative care.

Throughout her undergraduate career, she engaged with, created, and led multiple student organizations. As founder of Art and the Brain at UNC, Shreeya fostered conversations integrating philosophy, art, and medicine, building metaphors to deepen understanding of neurological illness and mental health. She also founded the Global Women’s Narrative Project at UNC, creating a platform for local stories and empowering change through narratives. Shreeya is also passionate about health humanities, and had authored three pieces for the Health Humanities Journal at UNC.

A Kuchipudi dancer for nearly 15 years, she was a proud member of UNC’s classical dance team, Ek Taal. She views dance as a living connection between her culture and her identity. Seeing herself as an artist, she turns to Indian classical dances and writing as outlets that run parallel to her interests in healthcare.

Shreeya’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is investigating community perceptions about HPV-related head and neck cancers, and is also evaluating the efficacy of existing interventions in India. Her study involves engaging with underserved communities and healthcare workers to build a nuanced understanding of the stigma surrounding HPV. The goal is to identify trends in existing beliefs and guide the development of educational and interventional materials that minimize health inequities and raise broader awareness across India.

Theresia von Weiss

Theresia von Weiss earned a BA in philosophy and studio art from St. Catherine University in 2023, where they were an Antonian Honors Scholar and graduated summa cum laude. Their academic and creative work centers on community-engaged art, environmental stewardship, philosophy, and cross-cultural collaboration. During their undergraduate studies, they contributed to projects exploring public art, social practice, and institutional history, including a student-led initiative focused on acquiring and exhibiting artwork by BIPOC artists for the university community.

Theresia has worked across nonprofit, educational, and arts organizations in roles emphasizing communication, collaboration, and public engagement. As a communications intern at Mary’s Pence, they supported nonprofit outreach efforts through writing and grant development. They later served as a teaching assistant for the course “Building a Creative Life” at St. Catherine University, where they collaborated on curriculum development and mentored students in realizing creative projects. Theresia’s current interests include philosophy of art, spiritual philosophy, environmental justice, and community-based artistic practice.

Theresia’s Fulbright-Nehru project is connecting the philosophy of art with the philosophy of religion. They are researching and writing about whether spiritual leaders are themselves considered artists. While current philosophical writing on the aesthetics of spiritual experience directly relates to visual arts and the concept of beauty, Theresia’s philosophy sets out the argument that spiritual leaders are artists. Since fundamental questions such as what an artist is and what art is are the most commonly explored concepts in the field of philosophy of art and aesthetics, looking at spiritual experiences as art steers that conversation toward a new and vital direction.

Patrick Vogel

Patrick Vogel is an artist based in Los Angeles. Born in West Hollywood, he grew up acting on film sets and learned to transpose that collaborative spirit to his multidisciplinary path as a visual artist. Through sculpture, drawing, installation, and painting, he explores the inner and outer conditions of exhibition making in the twenty-first century.

Patrick’s transdisciplinary approach is unique, reflective of a conceptual practice grounded in site-specific research, happenstance, and an expanded art historical paradigm. His practice reveals power structures formed by particular stories that we tell ourselves, namely of imperialism, colonialism, and race prejudice, and the lethal epistemes branching out of them. His most recent work, the Hermit Series, takes on Roman and Gothic architectural forms, overlaid with photographs of palaces and royal doorways, which are then digitally carved, painted, and printed onto mirrors. Throughout, he deploys gesture and abstraction to produce an architectural palimpsest, a relic covered in futuristic cave paintings, which interrupts a clean reading of Western ideology as neutral, invisible, or inherent.

Patrick has traveled, taught, and lived across six continents. He received his BFA from Oregon Center for the Arts in Ashland, Oregon, and his MFA in art and technology from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California. He has been an artist-in-residence at the School of Visual Arts in New York and the Vermont Studio Center.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Patrick is studying British colonial architecture and native Indian architecture in Bengaluru, and developing a new series of installations in response. Through research and dialogue, he seeks to understand the varied epistemologies that became constructed public spaces in Bengaluru, spaces that owe its origins to different continents and cultures entirely. Through this project, he hopes for a broader perspective on global communities, how they interact, affect one another, and hybridize over time, and how we might, with clarity and focus, produce different spaces to better navigate the coming centuries. As part of the project, he is also a visiting artist-professor at Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology, where he is engaging with BFA/MA students in the Contemporary Art Practice program.

Eric Villalobos

Eric Villalobos is a fourth-year PhD student in the Graduate Division of Religion at Emory University. His research uses ethnographic and historical methodologies to examine the so-called “semi-renunciant” yati monastic lineages within Mūrtipūjaka Śvetāmbara Jainism in North India. This project takes him through the history of Indian monasticism, astrology, mantra science, and the colonial encounter with South Asian Indigenous medical systems. Eric received his BA in religious studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his MA in South Asian area studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Eric’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring the historical collaboration between Rajasthani kingdoms and Jain merchant communities in promoting Jain monks as medical practitioners during the colonial era. He is seeking answers as to how and why Jain monks, supported by Rajasthani kings and the Jain merchant community, transformed modern Āyurveda into a distinctly Hindu-identified medical science. To this end, he is conducting research in Rajasthan State Archives at Bikaner, examining the royal court documents of the Rajput kingdoms, especially of Bikaner, Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur. Beyond this, he is gathering oral histories about Jain monastic rest houses which functioned as traditional medical houses during the colonial period.

Sheel Trivedi

Sheel Trivedi is a graduate of Yale University, where he earned a BS in neuroscience and a certificate in global health studies. His professional work sits at the intersection of neurological research and social science, with a dedicated focus on the unique healthcare challenges facing older adults. He is committed to applying a patient-centered approach to medicine, utilizing insights from both basic laboratory science and community-based research to improve health equity.

During his three years in the Cafferty Lab at the Yale School of Medicine, Sheel investigated intact corticospinal tract (CST) synaptic plasticity following spinal cord injury and rehabilitation. Beyond his work at Yale, Sheel is a research affiliate with the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, where he is working on a project exploring the financial planning and life expectations of older adults living with HIV in Philadelphia.

Outside of his research, Sheel led student organizations at Yale focused on South Asian culture and STEM education, and served as a student fellow at the South Asian Studies Council at the MacMillan Center. In the New Haven community, he remained engaged through dementia-related volunteering and community blood pressure screenings.

Sheel’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating the challenges of “transnational caregiving” for persons with dementia in Bengaluru, India, who have relatives in the United States. Affiliated with NIMHANS, the project is conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews with multiple “transnational caregiving units” comprising patients, local caregivers, healthcare professionals, and U.S.-based relatives. By identifying, through NVivo analysis, themes such as communication difficulties, expectational burden, and economic impacts, Sheel’s research aims to inform culturally sensitive care frameworks and contribute to India’s dementia action plans to improve well-being for transnational families.