India Fellows Years: Indian Fellows 2023-2024

Aasiya Nabi

Ms. Aasiya Nabi is a Ph.D. candidate at Sher-e- Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, Srinagar. Using technologies like Crispr-cas9 to target pathogen effector genes and Transcriptomics, her doctoral thesis focuses on understanding how pathogens modulate the host functions during pathogenesis. She has publications in well reputed journals,and has participated and presented papers and abstracts at national and international conferences and webinars.

Ms. Nabi holds a bachelor’s degree in horticulture, and a master’s degree in plant pathology from SKUAST-Kashmir. She has been a meritorious student during her bachelors’ and masters’ degree. As a student of horticultural sciences, she likes to participate in farmer awareness programs. She is also a nature photographer who likes spending time in nature. She enjoys traveling and interacting with people from different cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Ms. Nabi is exploring the Crispr-cas9, a genome editing tool, to delineate pathogenesis mechanism of plant pathogens. She is primarily working on understanding the host-pathogen interaction to devise viable and eco-friendly disease management strategies.

Rohit Mukherjee

Mr. Rohit Mukherjee is a Ph.D. candidate at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He is working on various aspects of condensed matter physics with a focus on the topological transport signatures in strongly correlated systems. He graduated from Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College in Kolkata with a bachelor’s degree and has a master’s degree in physics from IIT Kanpur. In August 2022, Mr. Mukherjee was a visiting student at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy.

Mr. Mukherjee is a teaching volunteer at PRAYAS, an initiative by IITK students to assist underprivileged school children near the university. He also enjoys traveling and meeting new people from different backgrounds and cultures. He is passionate about educating the general public about science and science communication.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Mukherjee is exploring topological spin transport in frustrated magnetic systems, such as spin liquids. A deeper understanding of these exotic states of matter can also shed light on the physics of the pseudo-gap phase in high-temperature superconductors, which is one of the biggest open questions in the field of condensed matter physics as well as fault-tolerant quantum computing.

Shivangi Mittal

Ms. Shivangi Mittal is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. She works in the domain of rheology and focuses on developing a theoretical and mathematical approach for understanding nonlinear rheological data for complex fluids. She is a recipient of the Prime Minister Research Fellowship from the Government of India that funds her research at IIT Kanpur. She earned her bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, Rajasthan. She has published in international peer-reviewed journals and presented at several conferences. Apart from research, she is passionate about teaching and is engaged in teaching B.Tech. students at government engineering colleges in Kanpur.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Ms. Mittal is developing the mathematical framework required to analyze thermodynamically out-of-equilibrium systems, or thixotropic materials, that have a time evolving structure and so, produce time-invariant outputs when subjected to oscillatory shear deformations. Her work presents new insights in understanding and defining thixotropy and viscoelasticity through rheological data.

Avijit Maity

Mr. Avijit Maity is a Ph.D. scholar at the Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Indore. His current area of research focuses on physical insight into novel lipid corona formation and its impact on protein corona formation. His research on the underlying mechanism of lipid corona formation on amino acid functionalized gold nanoparticles has been published in several peer-reviewed international journals. He also won the best oral presentation award in the CHEM-In-house Symposium held at IIT Indore, India.

Mr. Maity earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the Vidyasagar University, Midnapore, West Bengal and his master’s degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology Indore . He was a recipient of the merit cum means scholarship from the Government of West Bengal and IIT Indore during his bachelor’s and master’s degree respectively. In his leisure time, he enjoys spending time with his friends and loves to arrange cultural programs.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Maity is exploring the impact of lipid corona composition on nanoparticle uptake by the cell. The aim of his project is to investigate the extent of the cellular uptake quantitatively when different surface charged lipid and hard-soft lipid corona is present around the nanoparticles. As the research on the lipid corona field is emerging day by day, his advanced research in this topic will provide a new outlook to Nanoscience community.

Mukesh Kumar Singh

Mr. Mukesh Kumar Singh is a Ph.D. research scholar at International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, TIFR, Bengaluru. His research interests span gravitational wave astronomy and astrophysics. In particular, he is interested in improving the gravitational wave early-warning of neutron star-black hole binary mergers. He is also interested in inferring the population properties of binary black hole mergers that could shed light on the understanding of stellar evolution, supernovae physics, and formation channels of compact binary systems.

Mr. Singh holds a bachelor’s in physics from Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, and a master’s in physics from Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai. He is the recipient of INSPIRE Scholarship to pursue higher education in science from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He has qualified various examinations such as Joint CSIR-UGC JRF-NET, JAM, JEST, and GATE. Apart from physics, he enjoys trekking and playing badminton. He is also keen on music and is learning to play violin. He loves to travel and meet new people and learn about their cultures while sharing his.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Singh is exploring the impact of subdominant modes of gravitational radiation on improving the GW early-warning of compact binary mergers. This will help astronomers point their telescopes to the merger location before the emission of any electromagnetic counterpart, potentially leading to multi-messenger observation.

Adway Kumar Das

Mr. Adway Kumar Das is a Ph.D. candidate at IISER Kolkata, West Bengal. His doctoral thesis focuses on how the statistical properties of the energy spectrum and states of various random matrix model manifests in the dynamics of single-particle quantum mechanical systems. His research has been published in peer-reviewed international journals like Physical Review E, Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, and Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (JSTAT). He has presented at several national and international conferences like Conference on Nonlinear Systems and Dynamics (CNSD), Statphys-Kolkata, and Nordita-Stockholm conference on Ergodicity Breaking and Integrability in Long-Range Systems and on Random Graphs, 2022.

Mr. Das holds a BS-MS dual degree from IISER Kolkata, West Bengal, where he was awarded the second-best thesis by the Department of Physical Sciences. He was awarded the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) fellowship in 2021 by the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India. He is also a member of the IISER Kolkata student chapter of OPTICA. While Physics keeps Mr. Das occupied, he is also interested in social work and loves to travel. He particularly enjoys trekking in Sikkim and strolling along the beaches of Kerala. He is an avid fan of Bayern Munich and relishes the works of Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay, Sidney Sheldon and Dan Brown.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Das is exploring the correlations among the energy levels of banded random matrices and corresponding Hilbert space structure. He is primarily working on the spectral statistics and quenched dynamics to address the loss of ergodicity and thermalization in single-particle quantum mechanical systems.

Satish Kumar

Mr. Satish Kumar is a doctoral candidate and Senior Research Fellow (UGC-JRF/NET) at Ashank Desai Centre for Policy Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, Maharashtra. His Ph.D. research links agricultural production with nutritional food security through agriculture diversification in the semi-arid climate. His research interests include agriculture-nutrition linkages, food and nutrition security, sustainable agriculture, and policy process and policy design in Indian agriculture.

Before joining IIT Bombay for his M. Phil., Mr. Kumar earned his bachelor’s and master’s in geography from Kirori Mal College, University of Delhi and Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi respectively. For his M. Phil. dissertation, he developed a land use vulnerability index (LUVI) for the Mumbai metropolitan region to suggest sustainable land use planning using empirical evidence.

Mr. Kumar has presented his work at many international conferences. In addition, he represented India in the NTU-STEP scholar program at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and assisted the TIGR2ESS project in India, which is a research collaboration of Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the University of Cambridge. He has delivered several lectures on agriculture sustainability and urban agriculture. He is also a university rank holder in the undergraduate program and represented the University of Delhi at several state-level table tennis tournaments.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Kumar is developing econometric models identifying the agriculture production and nutrition relationship in a geographical setting. He believes that his research will enable agriculture-dependent small and marginal farmers to achieve nutritional and food security through agricultural diversification.

Neha Kaushal

Ms. Neha Kaushal is a Ph.D. candidate at the Material Science and Sensor Application department of CSIR-Central Scientific Instruments Organisation (CSIO), Chandigarh. Her doctoral research primarily focuses on the design and characterization of nanocarbon based heterojunctions for the photocatalytic degradation of endocrine disrupting chemicals in water. She is an awardee of the prestigious DST-Inspire Fellowship since 2019.

Ms. Kaushal gained her bachelor’s degree in non-medical (2016) from Hans Raj Mahila Maha Vidyalaya College, Punjab. For her bachelor’s thesis, she worked on a project titled, “Kinetics and Thermodynamic Study of Adsorption of Cr (VI) on the Low-cost Leaf Powders” under the DST-STAR grant of Department of Biotechnology. Her master’s degree is in physics (2018) from Lovely Professional University, Punjab, where she was awarded a gold medal for securing first rank in the university. Here, she explored the NIR spectroscopy and Aqua-photomics for the detection of various adulterants in milk as her master’s thesis project and gained publications in the same. Apart from research, she has a keen interest in arts and crafts.

As a Fullbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Ms. Kaushal is targeting successful development of new photocatalytic materials for the degradation of organic pollutants in water. She believes these materials could have energy harvesting applications.

Sana Imtiazbhai Jindani

Ms. Sana Imtiazbhai Jindani is a Senior Research Fellow at CSIR-Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute (CSIR-CSMCRI), Bhavnagar, Gujarat. The focus of her doctoral research encompasses theoretical understanding of stereo-electronic interactions and their role in an interplay between structure and reactivity of organic- and bio-molecules. She combines a variety of computational tools to gain a full understanding of these subtle but decisive interactions. Apart from her thesis work, she enjoys collaboration and has published collaborative work in peer-reviewed international journals.

Ms. Jindani graduated in inorganic chemistry from The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Gujarat. As a part of her M.Sc. dissertation, she focused on developing ruthenium complexes as DNA binders. Before joining her Ph.D., she worked as Assistant Professor at C U Shah University, Gujarat, where she delivered lectures to B.S. and M.S. students on topics in inorganic chemistry.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Ms. Jindani is working on overcoming the reactivity/stability trade-offs of click reagents for biorthogonal reactions through strain reinforcement and stereo-electronic stabilization. These biorthogonal reactions will be utilized for bio-molecular labelling without interfering with natural biological processes. In addition to her research work, Ms. Jindani hopes to encourage and promote Indian traditional yoga practices at her host institution for an active and healthy lifestyle.

Md Haseen Akhtar

Md. Haseen Akhtar is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh and a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship. His doctoral thesis focuses on design, development, and deployment of a cost-effective mobile Primary Health Centre (mPHC) for low-resource settings. His research has been published in peer-reviewed international journals, and he has presented at several national and international conferences. He is interested in sustainable and responsible design.

Mr. Akhtar holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the National Institute of Technology, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, and a master’s degree in design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. He was the Gold Medalist of B.Arch. (2015-2020), was awarded the outstanding student award and was the recipient of four consecutive academic excellence scholarships (2016-2019) from the alumni association, RECAL of NIT Trichy. He is a registered architect with the Council of Architecture. He has an interest in design for society and enjoys traveling in the mountains and meeting people from various cultures.

As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research fellow, Mr. Akhtar is exploring design and development of collapsible sub-systems of mobile Primary Health Centre (mPHC) for low-resource settings. His focus is to design sub-systems that take up the least amount of space and are easily portable by increasing their collapsibility.