Archives: Meet Our USA Fulbrighters

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 GITAM, 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.

Alisha Flexwala

Alisha Flexwala is a 2026 dean’s distinguished graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned a BS in psychology. She pursued an interdisciplinary education in psychology, neuroscience, and communication, thereby shaping her aspiration to become a physician who values both science and compassionate care. At UT Austin, she contributed to neuroimaging research at Dr. Franco Pestilli’s lab, working on clinical MRI data and white matter analysis. She is now a co-author on two of the lab’s research publications. As a Gilman scholar, she also participated in cognitive neuroscience research at the University of Geneva during her study abroad program in Switzerland.

Alongside research, Alisha is actively engaged in mentorship, clinical service, and education. She has mentored students to support their academic and personal growth, and has served as an undergraduate teaching assistant for an upper-division psychology course on cognitive development. At UT Austin’s Health Services, she supported the physical therapy team in patient care and recovery. Her lived experiences have shaped her commitment to advancing equitable healthcare and improving patient outcomes through global collaborations.

Alisha’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is examining how traditional Rajasthani Kathputli puppetry can be adapted to support maternal health education among underserved communities in India. Through interviews and collaborations, the project is exploring culturally grounded approaches to communicating health information in accessible and engaging ways. Using qualitative research methods, the study is also evaluating the effectiveness and broader potential of integrating traditional art forms into health initiatives. Ultimately, the project aims to demonstrate how cultural innovation can promote maternal well-being in sustainable ways, thus contributing to healthier mothers and babies.

Mmasinachi Ezuma-Ngwu

Mmasinachi Ezuma-Ngwu completed her BS in public health science at the University of Maryland in 2022. Between 2022 and 2023, she volunteered at clinics, including the Pregnancy Aid Center and the Covenant Psychiatric Services, where she supported underserved patient populations. From 2023 to 2025, she worked at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) as a postbaccalaureate research fellow in the Inherited Neuromuscular Diseases Unit. She continued in the same lab as a special volunteer in 2026. Her research focused on spinal and bulbar muscular atrophy (SBMA), where she analyzed the skeletal muscle transcriptome and led a project to identify disease-specific biomarkers using samples from a Natural History Study. She also codeveloped a patient-reported outcome measure, the HI-Questionnaire, now used in such a study. She is a co-author on a publication in Brain Communications examining neuronal injury biomarkers in SBMA and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis type 4 (ALS4). Mmasinachi has presented her work at conferences, including those of the Society for Neuroscience and the Student National Medical Association. She is interested in pursuing medical school and advancing research in the medical field.

In India, dementia is rapidly increasing, with millions of families serving as primary caregivers with limited formal support. In her Fulbright-Nehru project in Karnataka, Mmasinachi is examining how dementia severity, patient needs, and caregiver well-being interact to shape caregiver burden. Using a realist review and stakeholder interviews, she is evaluating existing interventions such as psychoeducation, support groups, and respite care. She is also collaborating with clinicians and community organizations to codesign and pilot a culturally tailored, scalable intervention. Through this work, she aims to identify effective, context-specific strategies to reduce caregiver burden and inform policies that strengthen support systems for families caring for individuals with dementia.

Moira Donovan

Moira Donovan is a writer and community-based development professional with six years of work experience. In 2020, Moira graduated magna cum laude from the Ohio State University with a BA in political science. Immediately upon graduation, she served as an AmeriCorps VISTA for one year with a local refugee resettlement agency in Columbus, Ohio. As she developed the institutional capacity of the organization, her work ranged from organizing conferences for community leaders to developing multiyear fundraising strategies. After her service ended, she remained with the agency for an additional year as their communications specialist, building up their recognition in the community. For the next two years, she worked as a grants and contracts specialist at the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Ohio State University. There, she managed comprehensive financial operations for grant-funded cancer research portfolios. From 2024 to 2025, she served as a Banyan Impact Fellow with the American India Foundation in New Delhi, India, leading the design and planning of the organization’s 25th anniversary campaign. After returning from India, she has been involved in early childhood education as a teacher, thereby further deepening her commitment to lifelong learning. With a particular passion for migration studies, she integrates research and data-driven insights with storytelling to create measurable impact and influence.

Moira’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining how colonial legacies, religion, and caste shape migration from South Goa to Dublin, Ireland. Following Brexit, Ireland has become a key destination for Goans holding Portuguese passports. The project is investigating how caste persists within Goan Catholic communities and influences migration opportunities, aspirations, and socioeconomic mobility. Using ethnographic methods, including interviews and participant observation across Goa, the study is exploring who migrates and why. It is also considering how migration reshapes the home communities. By analyzing this under-explored corridor, the research contributes to broader discussions related to contemporary migration in terms of caste, religion, and transnational mobility.

Tenzin Dechen

Tenzin Dechen is a biostatistician with experience in healthcare delivery and data science. She holds an MPH in epidemiology from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Her work focuses on applying data analytics to understand clinical workflows, support care coordination, and inform health system improvement.

Tenzin spent nearly a decade at the Center for Healthcare Delivery Science at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Boston, where she worked with diverse health and population datasets, including electronic health record (EHR) data, to evaluate care delivery, assess quality, and support data-informed decision-making. Her work comprised statistical modeling, causal inference, and predictive analytics, with applications in population health and health equity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she contributed to the development of forecasting models to help anticipate patient demand and guide resource planning. She also codeveloped a mobility-based Business Risk Index using location data to examine patterns in transmission risk and support hospital operations.

Currently on a self-directed sabbatical, Tenzin is focusing on global health systems and digital health infrastructure. Her work emphasizes the use of EHR systems to improve data quality, workflow efficiency, and patient care in resource-limited settings.

Tenzin Dechen’s Fulbright-Nehru research project is exploring how an EHR system can support patient care and clinic operations at Sera Mey Health Center, located in a Tibetan settlement in southern India and serving both Tibetan and neighboring rural populations. Using historical paper records and newly digitized data, the project is examining patterns in patient care, identifying gaps in follow-up, and evaluating how workflow factors such as patient volume and wait times shape service delivery. By generating practical insights and tools tailored to the center’s needs, the project aims to support clinical workflows, improve efficiency, and enable more patient-centered healthcare in the resource-limited setting.

Vincent DeLaurentis

Vincent DeLaurentis is a critical urban geographer in the Earth and Environmental Sciences program at the CUNY Graduate Center. He graduated with a BS in foreign service from Georgetown University in 2017. Before beginning his PhD program, Vincent worked as the director of outreach at the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent labor rights monitor focused on the apparel industry. At the same time, he developed popular education materials, and also organized tenants through the nonprofit One DC – Organizing Neighborhood Equity.

He studied and researched in Chandigarh for over a decade through two Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Summer Research grants (2025 and 2026), two Critical Languages scholarships (2015 and 2017), and an American Institute of Indian Studies/U.S. Department of Education fellowship (2025). Vincent has presented his research at several platforms: an annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers; a Global Labor University conference; an international conference of Critical Geography; and an annual conference of the journal Historical Materialism. His writing on labor and urban space can be found in ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, New Labor Forum, and the Washington Post. Vincent also practices film photography and the sitar.

For his Fulbright-Nehru project, Vincent is studying the ways in which visions of modernity and efforts to create a slum-free city underscore a fundamental friction in Chandigarh’s urban transformation. While the city administration mobilizes abject labor toward Chandigarh’s expansion and maintenance, the city infrastructure neglects laborers’ social and housing needs. Through participant observation, semi-structured interviews, participatory mapping, and archival research, Vincent’s project is interrogating worker intervention in the built environment, which takes place both through sanctioned and unsanctioned processes.

Pranathi Dandu

Pranathi Dandu received both her BSPH in biostatistics and her BS in neuroscience, with a minor in chemistry, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She graduated with distinction and honors as both a Carolina Research Scholar and as a Buckley Public Service Scholar, and recently completed her MS in physiology from North Carolina State University. Her academic and research interests focus on the neural mechanisms underlying sensory processing and predictive coding, and their implications for neurological and developmental disorders, particularly autism spectrum disorder. Given her background in public health and experiences in rural India, Pranathi is interested in understanding how gaps in healthcare access and literacy can create barriers to receiving effective medical care. She is especially interested in the role cross-cultural and global health perspectives can play in shaping more accessible and equitable care.

At UNC Chapel Hill, Pranathi worked as a research assistant in Dr. Hiroyuki Kato’s lab in the Department of Psychiatry, investigating the neural circuits underlying predictive coding in the auditory cortex. Her work involved neural tracing and imaging to study how the brain filters and adapts to sensory information. During her time there, she completed an honors thesis examining topographic projections from the orbitofrontal cortex to the auditory cortex; she also coauthored publications. Outside of research, she served as a copresident for the Biostatistics Student Association and was involved with the American Mock World Health Organization as a DAIS codirector. Pranathi also cofounded SPROUT Nutrition, a community initiative focused on providing nutrition education and support for underserved families, for which she received the Robert E. Bryan Fellowship. She hopes to pursue a career as a physician dedicated to translating neuroscience research into accessible, culturally informed interventions for children with neurodevelopmental conditions.

For children with autism spectrum disorder, ordinary sounds like traffic can be overwhelming and disrupt daily life, yet effective interventions remain underdeveloped. Motivated by this gap, Pranathi’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating whether structured auditory training can improve sensory adaptation in autistic children, reducing sensory distress. Working with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, she is developing and piloting a low-cost, tablet-based intervention and collecting neurophysiological data to assess its efficacy in reducing sensory hypersensitivity and improving adaptive functioning. The findings aim to inform scalable interventions for autism in low-resource settings while advancing our understanding of sensory processing in neurodevelopmental disorders.