Archives: Meet Our India Fulbrighters

Amritha M. S.

Amritha M. S. is a research scholar at the Department of Botany, University of Calicut, Kerala, India. Her research is supported by CSIR in the form of a junior research fellowship, and her research is jointly supervised by Prof. (Dr.) Jos T. Puthur and Dr. Kishore Sridharan.

She is a proud alumna of St. Mary’s College, Thrissur, Kerala, India and St. Thomas College (Autonomous), Thrissur, Kerala, India, where she did her Bachelor’s degree and Master’s degree in Botany, respectively. For her doctoral research, she is studying the role of “Nanoscale graphitic carbon nitride (g-C3N4) priming of rice (Oryza sativa L.) for enhancing abiotic stress tolerance”. She has publications in top-tier journals to her credit.

She is attempting to develop a cost-effective and farmer-friendly technique for protecting plants against various abiotic stresses using nanostructured priming agents, under the supervision of her guides. Apart from her research, Amritha enjoys teaching students and is an excellent mentor who has been successful in inspiring some of her students to pursue careers in science and research while working as Assistant Professor. Her hobby is to identify plants and learn about the flora of different places.

The Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship will help her explore how nano-structural material priming agents such as g-C3N4 and their relatively useful forms can help plants cope with adverse environmental conditions, as well as the molecular mechanisms behind this plant tolerance. It also allows her to examine how the study results will benefit farmers

Ammoose Kunjanparampil Jayan

Ammoose K. Jayan is currently conducting her research under the DST-Inspire Junior Research Fellowship at the Department of Geology, Central University of Kerala, Kerala. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geology and Water Management with first-rank from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala. She is also a first-rank holder during her Master’s in Geology from Central University of Kerala, India. Her doctoral research mainly focuses on the paleoceanographic investigations of sediments from the Bay of Bengal (BoB). She studies the assemblages of planktonic foraminifera and its shells’ geochemical composition in order to understand the impact of climatic and environmental changes on modern and fossil organisms, particularly during the Holocene.

Ms. Jayan has published her research findings in the International journal Marine Micropaleontology and presented her work at several National and International conferences. In 2021, she was awarded with the TMS Grant-in-Aid, by The Micropaleontological Society, London. In the same year, she also participated in a scientific expedition to BoB Onboard Sagar Kanya Research Vessel, to collect gravity core samples for her research. During her Master’s, she was one of the recipients of the Indian Academy of Sciences’ Summer Research Fellowship, 2018, and had conducted research at the National Institute of Oceanography, Visakhapatnam.

As a Fulbright-Kalam Fellow, Ms. Jayan will work on the fate of the East India Coastal Current (EICC) during the Holocene and H1 event, correlating with excessively strong and weak phases of ISM variability. Another goal of this research is to test any offset in the elemental and isotopic composition of the morphotypes of Globigerinoides ruber, a mixed-layer planktonic foraminiferal species, from the BoB.

Manoj Hariharan

Manoj Hariharan’s love of science began with a trek in fall, with his father, when his eyes captured the changing color of leaves in the midst of sheets of rain that turned paths into bewitching rivulets. Pursuing a doctorate nurtures this fascination scientifically. It also brings a deeper glimpse into all the good nature can do, from uncovering our survival to understanding Earth’s processes that shape our world.

At the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Hariharan covers biosphere-atmosphere interactions and intends to understand how climate, pollution, atmospheric and geographic sciences shape and are shaped by the terrestrial carbon cycle. He tries to picture them mainly with the “eye in the sky.” He is a graduate of the Department of Geography at the University of Madras, Chennai, and a Project Fellow at the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun. He loves stargazing in his downtime.

As a Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellow, Hariharan anticipates spending time with climate models at a supercomputer cluster to understand the dynamic traits of carbon. He will focus on the sensibility of the terrestrial ecosystems to environmental change, by attributing the processes to observed changes in the carbon pools using an integrated data platform. He expects the outcomes to draw him closer to better quantifying the trajectory of terrestrial carbon pools. Besides, he plans to explore the starry nights of the Colorado mountain trails and eagerly awaits experiencing a snowy Christmas eve.

Venugopal Vuruputur

Dr. Venugopal Vuruputur is presently a faculty member in the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (CAOS), Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He has an M.S. and Ph.D. from University of Minnesota and a B.Tech. from IIT Madras, all in Civil Engineering (with specialization in Hydrology). Since joining CAOS, Dr. Vuruputur and his students have focused on characterizing the multiscale space-time structure of tropical rainfall and its variability. More recently, he has also been exploring hydrology-oriented problems, including estimation and simulation of surface and subsurface storage and their variability in the Ganges-Brahmaputra River system, coupled with analyzing geochemical markers upstream of the river to better characterize and understand landslide-triggered flash floods. He was an Associate Editor of Water Resources Research during the period 2013-2017 and has been on the review editorial board of Frontiers in Atmospheric Sciences since 2015. He has also been a member of national and regional committees related to cloud seeding experiments in India, and water resources management.

During his stint as a Fulbright-Kalam fellow at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), in collaboration with Prof. Jin-Yi Yu of the Department of Earth Science, Dr. Vuruputur proposes to identify and robustly characterize pathways from the midlatitudes that can potentially modulate the sub seasonal variability of the Indian monsoon, especially in the early and late phases of the season.

Vikram Vishal

Dr. Vikram Vishal is an Associate Professor in the Department of Earth Sciences and an associate faculty in the Interdisciplinary Programme in Climate Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, Mumbai. He leads the ‘Computational and Experimental Geomechanics’ group at IIT Bombay. Dr. Vishal worked at IIT Roorkee over 2013-16, during which he pursued the Fulbright-Nehru postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Dr. Vishal also serves as the Convener of the DST-sponsored ‘National Centre of Excellence in Carbon Capture and Utilization’ at IIT Bombay. He is a recipient of two national awards and holds the young scientist recognition from all major science academies in India. He is currently a member of the Indian National Young Academy of Sciences.

Dr. Vishal’s research interests are in the domains of geomechanics, carbon capture and sequestration, enhanced petroleum recovery and unconventional hydrocarbon systems.

During his Fulbright-Kalam Climate Fellowship at MIT, he aims to develop an integrated risk assessment framework using experimentally validated simulations for CO2 storage in a mature oilfield in India. This research work will build on evaluating the storage readiness of specific fields in an onshore sedimentary basin. Detailed understanding of the barriers and their elimination will be key to successful deployment of carbon capture and storage in India, and advance their readiness levels.

Anushree Malik

Dr. Anushree Malik is Institute Chair Professor at Centre for Rural Development and Technology, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, New Delhi. She works in the broad area of biological waste treatment, algal biorefineries, and resource recovery. She has been leading several carbon negative-integrated algal biorefinery projects targeting at least six sustainable development goals via product formulation as well as technology development for on-site municipal and industrial effluent’s treatment.

Dr. Malik received her Ph.D. from IIT Delhi, New Delhi in 2000. Subsequently, she worked as JSPS post-doctoral fellow at Utsumoniya University, Japan and as an Assistant Professor at School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi before joining IIT Delhi in 2004. She had successful international collaborations with Netherlands, Sri Lanka, Brazil, besides many national projects and industrial collaborations. Dr. Malik received the DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Program Award (2015), BRSI Fellow Award (2019), and also featured in a list of 75 women in STEAM disciplines, an honor jointly bestowed by the Government of India and the British High Commission.

Dr. Malik’s Fulbright-Kalam project aims to design an experimental framework for 3D printing specific algal-bacterial communities with well-defined architectures and compositions. The studies will enhance our understanding of how such defined algal-bacterial communities contribute to carbon sequestration in response to environmental stresses, and whether carbon sorption and release turn close loop with algal communities trapping biogenic CO2. For her teaching component, Dr. Malik plans to teach courses related to Biofuels and Green Chemistry.

Subhasish Basu Majumder

Dr. Subhasish Basu Majumder is a Professor in the Materials Science Center at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, West Bengal. In recent years, he has been actively involved in the development of lithium/sodium ion rechargeable batteries, battery/supercapacitor hybrid and semiconducting metal oxide chemiresistive gas sensors.

Dr. Basu Majumder received his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. As a researcher he has worked in the USA and Germany before joining IIT Kharagpur as a faculty member in 2006. He is now working on several national missions funded by the Government of India. Dr. Basu Majumder is a recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for experienced researchers (2004-2005). He is currently serving as an editorial board member of Scientific Reports (Nature) and Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (IOP Sciences). He is a Fellow of the West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology and a recipient of the Materials Research Society of India medal.

The Lithium–Sulphur battery is far more environmentally friendly as it uses only scarce lithium, has significantly higher specific energy density than lithium-ion cells, and is easier to recycle.

Dr. Basu Majumder’s Fulbright–Kalam project aims to develop a facile one-step scalable process to increase the loading and conductivity of sulphur; retard long chain polysulphides shuttling, tackle volumetric fluctuation of active particles and inhibit the lithium anode corrosion together with its dendritic growth during discharge – charge cycles. The developed Li – S system would yield increased discharge capacity with excellent cycleability and rate performance.

Bhavna Sawnani

Ms. Bhavna Sawnani is Officer on Special Duty (OSD) at the head office of the Directorate of Education, Delhi and Lecturer of Biology. With master’s degrees in zoology, education, and English, Ms. Sawnani has worked in the field of education for the past 21 years and as a mentor teacher for six years.

During her tenure as a teacher, she worked on several science projects and her models were recognized at the state level for their innovative approach. She was awarded the State Teachers’ Award – Delhi and Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Award for her significant contributions in the field of education. Ms. Sawnani is Editor of Dilli Shiksha magazine and quarterly school science magazine; in-charge of the social media team of the Delhi Directorate of Education and alumni projects; and coordinator of all delegates from India and abroad. She has also represented Delhi at several international conferences and has served as a panelist in several educational programs. As a mentor teacher, Ms. Sawnani observed her colleagues’ classes, offered feedback for improvement, conducted staff meetings and workshops for teachers, developed curriculum for the Delhi Board of Education, and designed several books.

During her Fulbright TEA program, Ms. Sawnani is learning pedagogical tools used by teachers to make classrooms accessible and inclusive. She further intends to work with parents of children with disabilities and bring them together as a community. She aims to disseminate insights gained from her stay in the U.S. to parents and teachers in her communities back home.

Shreya Sarkar

Dr. Shreya Sarkar is working as a guest researcher at the GNSS Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Burdwan, West Bengal. She has worked in collaboration with different space agencies across the globe and published several peer-reviewed papers in reputed national and international journals. She obtained scholarships from the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), and ISU, France. In 2019, Dr. Sarkar was the only Indian who received a grant from UNOOSA for presenting her research work at the UN/Fiji Workshop on the Applications of Global Navigation Satellite Systems. At this workshop, she also acted as the rapporteur for one of the sessions. She received the prestigious Quarterly Franklin Membership from the London Journals Press. She is also a member of the Women in Aerospace network, Europe; the Space Generation Advisory Council, Austria; and an editorial board member of two Scientific International Open Access Journals.

After pursuing her Ph.D. in physics, Dr. Sarkar obtained her second master’s in space science from the International Space University (ISU), France. She has been teaching physics for the past 16 years at a government sponsored school in West Bengal. Earlier, she worked as a guest lecturer in different graduate, postgraduate, and engineering colleges in West Bengal. She actively organizes science fairs, science seminars, and visits to university research laboratories. As a science teacher, Dr. Sarkar strives to inspire students in science education. To this end, she is conducting virtual space tours for Indian students visiting the central campus of ISU, France and is mentoring her students’ research work on UN’s sustainable goals.

Through her participation in the Fulbright TEA program, Dr. Sarkar hopes to achieve her vision of building a global teacher network. She aims to utilize her insights from the program to create an all-inclusive joyful learning experience for the all-round development of students. She also wants to further her work of including space education in the school curriculum.

Nijoy P Jose

Dr. Nijoy P Jose is a higher secondary school teacher and trainer of the English language at St. Thomas Higher Secondary School in Pala, Kerala, and a life skill trainer certified by Junior Chamber International. He has a master’s, an M.Phil., and a Ph.D. in English. Through his 21 years of teaching experience, he has worked as a student trainer, a teacher trainer, and a trainers’ trainer. Dr. Jose is also a columnist and the author of three books. He has received many awards and recognitions from various firms, including the Manorama Online Thought Leader Fellowship 2022.

Through his participation in the Fulbright TEA program, Dr. Jose aims to be academically sharp and socially productive. The program is helping him learn about the global scenario of the teaching-learning process and interactions with native speakers of the English language are helping him reimagine his language-learning classrooms back home. He further believes that the FTEA program will help him in developing strategies to address the challenges faced by marginalized groups while learning English.