USA Fellows Year: U.S. Fellows 2022-2023

Narayanan Kuthirummal

Dr. Narayanan Kuthirummal is a physics professor and most of his academic career has been spent at the College of Charleston (CofC) having around 10,000 students with about 5% graduate students. He is currently on his second term as Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at CofC. Dr. Kuthirummal follows a teacher-scholar model and his current experiences and skill sets include developing effective teaching strategies, developing degree programs (undergraduate and graduate), promoting experiential learning, recruitment, promoting diversity, and developing connections with industries. He received his PhD in Physics from Banaras Hindu University, India. Before joining CofC in 2004, Dr. Kuthirummal spent about three years at Brown University (USA) as a Postdoctoral Associate and about five years as postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica, Taiwan. Dr. Kuthirummal’s research interests include nanomaterials for energy applications, composite polymer materials for medical applications, and nondestructive evaluation techniques applied to nanomaterials. He has mentored 30 undergraduate research students and published 53 peer-reviewed publications in international journals and about 55 abstracts in national/international conferences. He received the Distinguished Teacher Award of CofC, Norine Noonan Sustained Achievement Award of the School of Sciences and Mathematics, Excellence in Collegiate Education and Leadership (ExCEL) Awards: Outstanding Faculty of the Year for the School of Sciences and Mathematics of the College of Charleston, and is a member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.

The objective of the proposed Fulbright-Nehru project is to engage students and faculty at Farook College in nanotechnology and nanomaterials characterization using nondestructive evaluation methods through a combination of teaching and research with emphasis on graphene-based nanocomposites. The research component of the proposed project includes synthesis and characterization of modified graphene nanocomposite materials. As part of the proposal, a course on “Nanotechnology and Advanced Nondestructive Evaluation Methods” will be developed and taught following a student-centered approach. Students will be introduced to the process of research through data analysis, interpretation, and to developing research questions and writing scientific proposals.

Chaya Gopalan

Dr. Chaya Gopalan received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Bangalore University, India, and her PhD from the University of Glasgow, Scotland. She continued her research as a postdoctoral research fellow at Michigan State University. Her teaching career included a tenure-track faculty member at St. Louis Community College and St. Louis College of Pharmacy before assuming a full professor position at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE). She has been teaching anatomy, physiology, and pathophysiology at both graduate and undergraduate levels for health professional programs. Dr. Gopalan has been practicing evidence-based teaching using team-based learning, case-based learning, and, most recently, the flipped classroom methods. She has received many teaching awards, including the Arthur C. Guyton Educator of the Year award from the American Physiological Society (APS), Outstanding Two-Year College Teaching award by the National Association of Biology Teachers, and Excellence in Undergraduate Education award by SIUE. She has also received several grants, including an NSF-IUSE, an NSF-STEM Talent Expansion Program, and the APS Teaching Career Enhancement awards. Dr. Gopalan has published numerous manuscripts and case studies and contributed to several textbook chapters and question banks for textbooks and board exams. She is the author of the textbook Biology of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases (Elsevier, 2022) and a frequent workshop facilitator and keynote speaker on teaching and learning in the US and abroad. Besides teaching and research, Dr. Gopalan is very active in the teaching section of the APS, where she currently serves as the Advisory Board Member of the Center for Physiology Education. Besides teaching and research, Dr. Gopalan enjoys mentoring her students and peers.

This Fulbright-Nehru proposal seeks to assess the current teaching practices in a rural college in India and subsequently provide faculty training to incorporate student-centered instructional methods such as flipped teaching in their courses and examine perceptions and intentions of faculty towards using innovative instructional strategies, faculty experiences in designing, implementing, and refining flipped teaching, and student outcomes of flipped classes. The proposed study intends to gain knowledge on student and faculty feedback on flipped instruction in a rural college in India with technological gaps. The potential and mitigating factors in implementing successful flipped teaching will aid in developing successful student-centered classrooms.

Thomas Boving

Dr. Thomas Boving is a Professor of Hydrogeology at the University of Rhode Island, USA. Born in Germany, he studied Geology at the University of Tübingen, Germany. After receiving his PhD in Hydrology and Water Resources from the University of Arizona, Tucson, USA, in 1999, he joined the University of Rhode Island, Kingston, USA, where he maintains a joint appointment in the Department of Geosciences and Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Dr. Boving is as an expert in the field of soil and groundwater remediation and is the co-author of the leading textbook in his field. He published over 80 work products, including peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and a book. His work is cited over 5,000 times. Dr. Boving’s research focuses on the fate and transport of legacy and emerging contaminants and their remediation, using novel treatment technologies. He also researches sustainable, community operated water treatment systems, such as riverbank filtrations technology, and their application in underserved rural areas in emerging economies. Besides his work in the US, he collaborates with researchers in North Africa and, for over 15 years, with NGOs and academic institutions in India, Nepal, and Indonesia. He currently serves on several boards of water research and management organizations and directs his university’s Graduate Certificate in Hydrology program. Outside his academic work, Dr. Boving enjoys building wooden furniture and traveling with his family.

As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar, Dr. Boving seeks to teach and conduct research in hydrogeological remediation science and engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, India. Remediation science and engineering in hydrogeology focuses on technologies and practices for the efficient and economic clean-up of polluted (ground)water. Starting in early 2023, Dr. Boving intends to teach the science and engineering fundamentals of groundwater remediation while also collaborating with faculty and students on innovative remediation technology research projects. A key beneficial outcome would be establishing the Department of Civil Engineering at IIT as a hotspot for hydrogeological remediation teaching and research in India.

Swasti Bhattacharyya

Dr. Swasti Bhattacharyya (PhD, RN) has taught Philosophy and Religion for over 20 years. She was Visiting Professor Emerita of Women’s Studies and Ethics and a 2021-2022 WSRP Research Associate at the Harvard Divinity School. Her current long-term ethnographic project explores how current generations are living out Vinoba Bhave’s (Gandhi’s disciple, friend, confidant, and spiritual successor) commitments to Sarvodaya (the holistic uplifting of all life). Her latest publication, “Shiva’s Babies: Hindu Perspectives on the Treatment of High-Risk Newborn Infants” in Religion and Ethics in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (Oxford University Press, 2019) and her book Magical Progeny, Modern Technology (SUNY, 2006) combine her experiences as a registered nurse with her expertise in ethics and the study of religion. Dr. Bhattacharyya is the current Director of the Uberoi Teacher Training Workshop – U.S. She also serves on the advisory board for the Center for Understanding World Religions (Loma Linda University), the American Academy of Religion’s Committee on the Status of Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Profession, and on the board of the Peace and Justice Studies Association.

Dr. Bhattacharyya’s Fulbright-Nehru project intends to explore the lives and work of the Sisters of the Brahma Vidya Mandir Ashram and three generations of people working for Sarvodaya. Coined by M. K. Gandhi and developed by his disciple, confidant, and spiritual successor Vinoba Bhave, Sarvodaya calls for the holistic uplifting of all life. Dr Bhattacharyya brings the stories and insights of those working for a better world, demonstrates their relevance in multiple contexts, and argues that worldviews grounded in Sarvodaya can bring radical ways of addressing contemporary global challenges, and working for a more just, compassionate, and loving world.

Jill Belsky

Dr. Jill Belsky is Professor Emerita from the University of Montana (UM) where she was a faculty member for 30 years, serving as Chair in the Departments of Sociology and Society and Conservation — the latter an interdisciplinary department in the College of Forestry and Conservation in which she was a founding member. She served as Director of the Bolle Center for People and Forests at UM, and as Editor-in-Chief of her discipline’s flagship journal, Society and Natural Resources. Dr. Belsky received her PhD from Cornell University in 1991 in Rural Sociology with specializations in natural resources, agriculture and southeast studies. She is a nationally and locally award-winning instructor, teaching highly popular classes in society, environment and development, international conservation and development, and political ecology. Her research has been widely published, and focusses on the intersections of rural livelihoods, economy, community-based natural resources and wildlife management, and the political economy of development, conducted often in collaboration with ecological scientists, managers and practitioners across South and Southeast Asia and the US west. She enjoys hiking, Nordic skiing and biking, as well as traveling and staying in mountain villages around the world.

Dr. Belsky’s Fulbright-Nehru project seeks to enhance environmental social science capacity in India through linking interactive and innovative teaching with participant action research (PAR). Both dimensions are informed by social-ecological theory and practice, and cultural/political ecology. The PAR project will collectively address human-wildlife conflicts and livelihood challenges in the Harsil Valley of Uttarakhand. PAR methodology utilizes inclusive, mixed methods to gather data relevant to a range of constituents to develop mutually-beneficial policy and programs, and context-specific, relevant content for class lectures, curriculum development and a workshop at the Wildlife Institute of India.

Sarah Pinto

Prof. Sarah Pinto is a Professor of Anthropology at Tufts University. Her research and teaching addresses cultures and histories of biomedicine in South Asia, especially as they pertain to kinship and gender. Most recently she has been working on histories of psychiatry in South Asia, with a focus on diagnoses related to “hysteria.” She is author of three books, Where There Is No Midwife: Birth and Loss in Rural India (Berghahn 2008), Daughters of Parvati: Women and Madness in Contemporary India (University of Pennsylvania Press 2014), which was awarded the Eileen Basker Memorial Prize for ethnographic writing on gender and health, and The Doctor and Mrs. A.: Ethics and Counter-Ethics in an Indian Dream Analysis (Women Unlimited 2019/Fordham University Press 2020), and numerous scholarly articles. Her current efforts consider concepts of the “good death” as they emerge in and beyond bioethical framings, highly collaborative models for ethnographic research and teaching, and writing at the intersections of ethnography, history, and fiction.

During her Fulbright-Nehru project, Prof. Pinto intends to involve several interlinked components: teaching a seminar-style workshop for graduate students, conducting preliminary ethnographic research, and building a collaborative research paradigm for ongoing work. The theme of these efforts is contemporary concepts of “good death” in West Bengal. Amid rapid changes in the Indian medical and legal landscape of end-of-life care, Prof. Pinto asks how ideas about a good death are formed and reformed at the juncture of medicine, law, religion, and everyday life. What does a good death look like in and beyond global bioethical formulations?

Purnima Madhivanan

Dr. Purnima Madhivanan is an Associate Professor in Health Promotion Sciences at the Mel & Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health at University of Arizona, Tucson. She received her medical training at the Government Medical College in Mysore, India and then an MPH and PhD in Epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Madhivanan has extensive experience in conducting multi-site domestic and international clinical and translational studies. She is the site PI and the Director of the Global Health Training Program at University of Arizona, Tucson for the Global Health Equity Scholar consortium in collaboration with Stanford, Yale and University of California, Berkeley. She also directs the Fogarty-Fulbright Fellowship program for University of Arizona. Dr. Madhivanan has been a PI of multiple federal and foundation grants, as well as a mentor and investigator of numerous NIH, CDC, and industry-sponsored studies and clinical trials. She has also served on multiple national and international research and steering committees.

Her research has focused on disadvantaged populations, elucidating the dynamics of poverty, gender, and the sociopolitical determinants of health, in particular the impact on women and children living in rural and limited resource communities. She has worked in India, Peru, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Nigeria, Ethiopia and in the US. To situate her research close to the communities she serves, she established a clinical site in Mysore, India in 2005 while completing her PhD dissertation. For over a decade, the Prerana Women’s Health Initiative has delivered low-cost, high-quality comprehensive reproductive health services to 50,000 low-income women living in Mysore.

Her work has resulted in more than 200 peer-review publications. She continues to develop novel lines of research and has been supported by foundations, biotechnology companies, federal and international funding organizations. Dr. Madhivanan serves as an advisor to a number of state departments of Public Health, non-profit as well as governmental research organizations. In 2007, she received the prestigious International Leadership Award from the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation for her work on HIV prevention. She is recipient of several teaching and mentoring awards including the Maria Valdez Mentoring Award at the University of Arizona

The overarching goal of Dr. Madhivanan’s Fulbright-Nehru project is to advocate for the medical and social needs of female cancer survivors and build capacity for research that will develop a survivorship care evidence base, explore strategies to facilitate provision of survivorship care, and disseminate best survivorship care practices to Indian physicians and public health practitioners. It is estimated that about 34,000 women are diagnosed annually with cancer in the south Indian state of Karnataka. Assuming an 81% overall five-year survival rate, the state would have more than 137,000 women cancer survivors in any year. In India, there is almost no active follow-up for patients who survive cancer treatment and there is limited information about their physical and mental health, and overall quality of life.

Margaret Phillips

Prof. Margaret Phillips is a paralegal educator, lawyer, writer and access to justice activist focused on developing experiential learning for paralegal students while promoting access to justice for under-served communities. She is currently the Director of the Paralegal Studies program at Daemen University in Buffalo, New York, and prior to that she taught Legal Research and Writing at the University of Buffalo School of law and was a civil litigator with experience in negligence, civil rights, and discrimination.

As an educator, Prof. Phillips is experienced in developing curriculum, presenting and teaching on topics ranging from social justice, legal ethics, legal research and writing, introduction to law, and legal research methods. She has presented to audiences including high school groups, paralegals, paralegal educators, practicing attorneys, and college students. She was recently selected to do a Tedx Buffalo talk “What if the Constitution Could Talk?”

As a writer, Prof. Phillis is the author of a college textbook on legal analysis and writing entitled: “A Practical Guide to Legal Research and Analysis for Paralegal and Legal Studies Students.” She also writes a regular column for the Bar Association for Erie County entitled “Spotlight on Paralegals.”

Her current scholarly focus is on access to justice effort locally, nationally, and internationally. As the program director for Paralegal Studies, she has been active in creating the Paralegal Clinic course as well as community-based short-term clinics such as expungement clinics to eradicate low-level marijuana related criminal convictions.

During her Fulbright-Nehru grant, Prof. Phillips intends to collaborate, develop and co-teach legal skills curriculum for paralegals and interns at the Human Rights Law Network, the legal clinics at the National Law University Delhi, and other paralegal organizations. The primary goal is to increase these organizations’ capacity, communication and collaboration to promote access to justice. The secondary goal is to form solid collaborations between the not-for-profits and law schools to enhance access to representation. Specifically, the training and teaching will support Human Rights Law Network in hosting more volunteers, enhance and grow legal clinics at NLU Delhi, and support community paralegal networks.

Anita Charles

Dr. Anita Charles is Director of Teacher Education and Senior Lecturer at Bates College, Lewiston, Maine. In the past, she has taught a wide variety of ages and abilities, from first graders through adult learners, including more than ten years as a high school English teacher.

Dr. Charles has conducted many workshops on a wide range of topics, including autism, special education, digital literacies, and teaching methodologies.

As a Fulbright Scholar in India in 2016, Dr. Charles taught undergraduates and explored issues of literacy and inclusion in pre-K-12 schools. Subsequently, she engaged in research on inclusive education for children with disabilities in India.

Dr. Charles has a PhD from University of New Hampshire in the area of Adolescent Literacy. Her dissertation on digital, social, and academic literacies won two national awards. She holds an MEd from Harvard and a BA from Dartmouth College. She has published numerous articles as well as several book chapters. In 2019, she also appeared on a nationally televised ABC news special with Diane Sawyer entitled “Screentime.”

For her Fulbright-Nehru grant, Dr. Charles plans to present on topics related to teacher education, literacy, inclusion and diversity, and/or similar areas of expertise. Her philosophy is based in progressive theory, which promotes a student’s learning process as one of teacher-student interaction, discovery, and growth, through a recognition of social and cultural contexts. In India, a number of initiatives strive to improve educational opportunities, processes, and outcomes for all children. In addition to teaching, she hopes to assist a host institution in curriculum/program development, participate in meetings as an active member of the organization, engage in local community outreach, and give presentations or workshops.

Jamie Barber

Prof. Jamie Barber holds a position in the academic and professional writing program at the University at Buffalo where she also served as the interim director of the Journalism Certificate Program in 2021-2022. Prof. Barber’s work in the classroom aims to decenter concepts of “normal” in order to invite students to leverage their diverse backgrounds and abilities as they develop their writing skills. She recently taught a class titled “Writing for Change” in which students learned research and writing skills while trying to enact change on a real-world problem that intersected with their interests and identities. These writing students extended the impact of their writing and learning by creating multimodal “campaigns” to get the word out about their change-making ideas. Students created activist-centered zines, podcasts, infographics, and other documents that extended beyond text-based communication. Prof. Barber is currently co-designing a first-year writing course in which students will explore their language backgrounds while speculating on what linguistic justice might look like in academic and professional writing contexts.

Prof. Barber’s creative work often focuses on interactions between humans and the more-than-human world. Her essay “The Trouble with Cockroaches” explores tension between a “do-no-harm” attitude and a cockroach infestation. Her essay “Accepting Impermanence” speculates that ancient people may have advice for a new mother. Prof. Barber is also developing her journalism portfolio, recently writing about earthquake research for Temblor, and about the Buffalo, NY community for Buffalo Rising.

Prof. Barber’s Fulbright-Nehru project seeks to build a collaborative framework between students, educators, artists, designers, and scientists. She plans to work with the Science Gallery Bengaluru, an institution already engaged in powerful connections between the arts and the sciences, to build workshops that will connect students to this collaborative framework. Students will learn science while they engage in multimodal science communication projects.