India Fellows Years: Indian Fellows 2023-2024

Naveen Anaswara

Dr. Naveen Anaswara is a service-oriented health professional and has served as the District Program Manager, National Health Mission, Kozhikode, Kerala for over half a decade. He completed his MBBS and his diploma in child health from the Government Medical College, Kozhikode, and he holds a PG diploma in health care management from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Dr. Anaswara has led many innovations in the government health sector. He played a key role in the development of the COVID-19 Jagratha portal—a comprehensive IT platform to help citizens gain access to information on the covid-19 health services and support available in Kerala. This initiative earned his team two state e-governance awards. Dr. Anaswara has pioneered several other projects during COVID, such as the first-of-its-kind Tele ICU and Mobile Unit Networks across the district. He also introduced Neo Cradle: A Comprehensive Newborn Care Management System in Kerala. Under his leadership, the Kozhikode district established the state’s first breast milk bank in the government sector. In recognition of his professional excellence, the district administration presented him with a good service entry award.

During his Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Dr. Anaswara is studying global health at Johns Hopkins University, Maryland. Through this fellowship, he aims to bolster his knowledge and analytical skills in the public health field to work more effectively at the national and international levels.

Nikita Agarwal

Ms. Nikita Agarwal is a lawyer, policy practitioner, and community educator. She started out as a policy practitioner in 2013, focusing on addressing the food security crisis and gender-based violence in India, and built her legal practice to bridge the gap between the theoretical and practical applications of law. She has primarily represented indigenous communities in the conflict zone of South Chhattisgarh, and women, children, and religious minorities in Delhi.

Ms. Agarwal was appointed member of the Committee Against Sexual Harassment of the Chhattisgarh Bar Council. She regularly drafts workplace sexual harassment policies and is a gender and sexuality trainer. Through her research and documentation work, she has engaged with issues around labor, conflict, gender and sexuality, forest rights, and the criminalization of the lives of indigenous people and de-notified tribes, among others.

Ms. Agarwal is a graduate of National Law University, Delhi. As a student, she founded the student volunteer group Aaghaaz to provide need-based education to women and children on campus and outside. She simultaneously became involved with the Narmada Bachao Andolan, a people’s anti-displacement resistance movement in Madhya Pradesh, which helped her understand the need to work with law in a holistic manner—synergizing reform processes, litigation, and community mobilizing.

During her Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship, Ms. Agarwal aims to study the U.S. criminal justice and legal aid systems. After completing her fellowship, Ms. Agarwal intends to build a practice with community lawyers and paralegals, to addresses the crisis of legal aid in India.

Tanita Abraham

Ms. Tanita Abraham is an independent consultant who has been working in the higher education space for around a decade. She works with universities and graduate programs to help shape them, lay a strong foundation for governance, and build them sustainably for the future. She helped set up the office of faculty and research at Ashoka University, among other projects in its first five years of inception.

Ms. Abraham completed the Young India Fellowship in 2014, a program that inspired her to work in higher education and to help other learners get the best out of their classroom experience. She also worked as a journalist with The Hindu at the Hyderabad desk and graduated from the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai. She completed her bachelor’s degree from Christ College, Bengaluru in English, psychology, and journalism.

Through her Fulbright-Nehru Master’s fellowship at Harvard University, Ms. Abraham hopes to understand the foundations of higher education better and further the work around access and inclusion in India.

Nadimpalli Siva Kumar

Dr. Nadimpalli Siva Kumar is Senior Professor at the School of Life Sciences, University of Hyderabad (UoH), Hyderabad, Telangana. Supported by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the German Research Foundation, Dr. Kumar developed and coordinated the first international research training group in Molecular and Cellular Glycosciences with the University of Muenster, Germany. He is also coordinating EU supported projects: “Internationalization and Virtual Exchange: Borderless Between EU and Asian Countries” and NAMASTE, and NAMASTE+ supported by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). His areas of research include protein biochemistry, cell, and molecular biology, glycobiology, and bio-nanotechnology. He received his master’s in biochemistry from Andhra University and his Ph.D. from CFTRI, Mysuru, Karnataka.

Asima Sahu

Dr. Asima Sahu is Professor of Political Science at the School of Social Sciences, Ravenshaw University, Cuttack. She has more than three decades of teaching and research experience. Her research areas include South Asian affairs, gender studies, Indian political processes, development studies, and nuclear non-proliferation. She earned her master’s degree from the University of Hyderabad, her M.Phil. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and her Ph.D. from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar. She has published nine books and several research articles in peer-reviewed journals and has participated in several national and international conferences. In addition to successfully completing research projects sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), Dr. Sahu is an Assessor at NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) and visits different higher education institutions for their accreditation evaluation.

Tanya Mary Koshy

Tanya Mary Koshy is Senior Program Manager at the Office for International Affairs, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai. At TISS, she oversees all operational, administrative, and program management aspects of the international office. She develops, facilitates, and organizes exchange and teaching programs, including dual and joint degrees, research projects, international admissions, field exposure, and cultural immersion activities for students and researchers, workshops, and high-level conferences. She has a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Pune and a master’s degree in international security from Sciences Po, Paris. Before joining TISS, she worked in the fields of anti-trafficking, conservation, sustainable development, and country of origin research.

Anil Kumar Tripathi

Dr. Anil Kumar Tripathi is Professor of Biotechnology and Director of the Institute of Science at Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. At BHU, Dr. Tripathi was instrumental in establishing a DST-supported state-of-the-art Sophisticated Analytical Technical Help Institute (SATHI) and a BIRAC-supported Bioincubator for Nurturing Entrepreneurship for Scaling Technologies (BioNEST). Since their inception, he has served as Coordinator of both SATHI-BHU and BioNEST-BHU. Dr. Tripathi obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in botany from Banaras Hindu University and has published 92 peer-reviewed articles. His research focus on genetics, genetic engineering, systems biology, and synthetic biology of a plant growth promoting bacterium. He is a recipient of the prestigious J C Bose National Fellowship in addition to several other national awards and grants.

Prabin Kumar Panigrahi

Dr. Prabin Kumar Panigrahi is the Dean (Faculty) and Professor of Information Systems at Indian Institute of Management Indore. Prior to this, he was the Chair of Post Graduate Programme and Chair of Executive Post Graduate Programme of the institute. He holds his master’s from National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India, and Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His current teaching and research interests include Emerging Technologies, Technology Adoption, Analytics, Social Inclusion in Information System, Cyber Security, and Artificial Intelligence. Prabin has various professional honours, awards, and fellowships both internationally and nationally across teaching, research, and industry. He has published several research articles and cases in peer reviewed international journals and case repositories of repute. He is also a member of the editorial board for some international journals. Prabin is also member of high-level committees in state, central government, and corporate bodies.

C. Krishna Mohan

Dr. C. Krishna Mohan is Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Hyderabad, and has served as Dean of Public and Corporate Relations at the institute. He was also the founder Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Hyderabad. He received his M.Tech. from NITK Surathkal and his Ph.D. from IIT Madras. Dr. Krishna Mohan heads the Visual Learning and Intelligence Lab at IIT Hyderabad, working in the research areas of video content analysis, computer vision, machine learning, and deep learning. He has published more than 90 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conference proceedings. He serves as a reviewer for several reputed international conferences and IEEE journals, and is Senior Member of IEEE; Member of ACM; AAAI Member; Life Member of ISTE; and Fellow of IEI, IETE, and TAS.

Elizabeth Joseph Abba

Dr. Elizabeth Joseph Abba is Associate Professor at the School of Sustainability and Associate Dean of International Programs, XIM University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha. She serves as a member of the joint board of Xavier-Emlyon Business School , Alumni Association and is the MAGIS Exchange Program Liaison at XIM. She also coordinates the Sustainability Discovery Program, an immersive and first-hand learning experience for students to understand sustainable communities. Dr. Abba is also an adjunct faculty member at the Division of Environmental Health, San Diego State University (SDSU). Her research interests include fine particles speciation and source apportionment, health-effect linkages due to air pollution, indoor air quality measurement, community development, and sustainability management. She was awarded the prestigious Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral and Professional Research Scholarship (2008-09) that supported her nine-month stint at SDSU. Since 2013, she has been hosting SDSU undergraduate students on study abroad programs in India. She earned her Ph.D. in environmental management from the National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.