Archives: Meet Our USA Fulbrighters

Colette Copeland

Ms. Colette Copeland’s artistic and pedagogical practice is critically engaged with a symbiotic, diverse range of aesthetic and cultural values which emphasize interdisciplinary and collaborative work. As an established visual artist, her work has been featured in 28 solo exhibitions and 155 group exhibitions/festivals spanning 35 countries over the past 30 years. Her work as a visual artist and cultural critic/writer examines issues surrounding gender, identity, death, and contemporary culture. She sources personal narratives, historical texts, and popular media, utilizing video, photography, printmaking, performance, dance, text, audio, sculptural installation, and community activism to question societal roles, gendered violence, and the pervasive influence of media and technology on communal enculturation. She is interested in artists, including the conceptual kind, whose work deviates from traditional disciplines and training and who use non-traditional materials and processes in their work, such as in sculptural installation, performance, video, relational aesthetics, and social practice/collaborative activism.

Ms. Copeland received her BFA from Pratt Institute in New York and her MFA from Syracuse University. She has taught at six institutions over the past 20 years, each with diverse, global student populations. At the University of Pennsylvania, she developed and taught a new interdisciplinary visual studies major that incorporated visual arts, critical theory, humanities, and social sciences. Currently at the University of Texas at Dallas, she teaches an interdisciplinary “Fluxus-inspired” contemporary practices studio course, digital photography, and performance art.

Since 2001, Ms. Copeland has been writing for a variety of art publications and institutions like The Photo Review, Fotophile, Afterimage, Exposure, Ceramics: Art and Perception, Arteidolia, Glasstire, and Eutopia. She has 116 published articles to her credit. Most recently, she published two catalog essays – “Avery, A Family Legacy” and “Re-emergence: Women AbEx and Color Field Artists”. She is a long-time member of AICA-International Association of Art Critics.

Ms. Copeland’s Fulbright-Nehru project is focusing on qualitative research about underrepresented female visual artists from India, whose work explores themes of boundaries – physical, emotional, real, imagined, geographical, virtual, convergent, divergent, and transformative – using conceptual and contemporary multimedia art practices.

Meenakshi Chandra Sekar

Dr. M. Chandra Sekar obtained his BPharm and MPharm from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, India. Then he earned a PhD at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, and completed his postdoctoral work from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Following this, Dr. Sekar was a researcher at the University of Alabama in Birmingham where he made significant contributions to the area of phosphoinositide signaling.

Dr. Sekar then served as a pharmacist at the University of Cincinnati Hospital in Ohio for seven years before joining the University of Findlay as an associate professor in pharmaceutical sciences in 2007. He was promoted to full professor with tenure in 2013 and now also serves as the International Ambassador for Pharmacy Education for the University of Findlay. Earlier, in 2010, he started a study abroad program that enabled student and faculty exchanges between the University of Findlay and pharmacy colleges in India. Over the past decade, 40 students from each country have availed of this opportunity.

Dr. Sekar’s commitment to improving pharmacy practices in India has been recognized by the Indian Pharmacist Association – by bestowing him with the M.L. Khorana Memorial Award in 2018 and electing him as a fellow of the association in 2019. Dr. Sekar’s other honors include: being a fellow of the American Pharmacists Association; winning the B.M. Mittal Memorial Award from his alma mater, BITS; and winning the David L. Allen award for holistic teaching.

In his Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Sekar is studying the impact of pharmacist involvement in improving patient outcomes for hypertension and diabetes.

Manish Chalana

Dr. Manish Chalana, PhD, is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington, with adjunct appointments in Architecture and Landscape Architecture in the College of Built Environments. He is also an affiliate of the South Asia Center in the Jackson School of International Studies (JSIS). His work engages with urban planning through the lenses of historic preservation, international planning and development, and equity and social justice. He is also the director of the Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation and co-directs the Center for Preservation and Adaptive Reuse (CPAR) which strives to connect the academia to the practice of historic preservation. Additionally, he is the membership chair of the National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE). Dr. Chalana’s scholarly contributions have been substantial, including two co-edited volumes. The first, titled Messy Urbanism: Understanding the “Other” Cities of Asia (with Jeffrey Hou, Hong Kong University Press, 2016), goes beyond the mainstream discourse in exploring the complexities of urbanism in Asian cities. The second volume, Heritage Conservation in Postcolonial India: Approaches and Challenges (with Ashima Krishna, Routledge, 2021), critically examines heritage conservation in the context of India’s postcolonial society. Additionally, he has published on topics of urban planning and historic preservation in a variety of academic journals, including the Journal of Architectural Education, the Journal of Heritage Stewardship, Planning Perspectives, Journal of Planning History, and Journal of the American Planning Association.

Dr. Chalana’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring the state of historic preservation, or “heritage conservation”, in India, focusing on its inclusivity and equity aspects. The project is primarily examining the representation of sites associated with underrepresented communities in the historical record and is assessing their management and interpretation on the ground. Additionally, the project is investigating the types of histories and memories that may have been lost for sites where physical evidence no longer exists. The study’s emphasis is on Dalits, non-elite Muslims, Sikhs, women, and non-binary groups.

Gil Ben-Herut

Dr. Gil Ben-Herut is an associate professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. He holds a PhD in religious studies from Emory University and a BA and MA from Tel Aviv University in Israel. His research interests include premodern religious literature in the Kannada language, South Asian bhakti (devotional) traditions, translation in South Asia, and programming in digital humanities.

His book, Śiva’s Saints: The Origins of Devotion in Kannada according to Harihara’s Ragaḷegaḷu (Oxford University Press, 2018), is the first study in English of the earliest Śaiva hagiographies in the Kannada-speaking region, and it argues for a reconsideration of the development of devotionalism as associated today with the Vīraśaivas. The book received the Best First Book Award for 2019 from the Southeastern Medieval Association and the 2020 Best Book Award from the Southeastern Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. Dr. Ben-Herut also received the Faculty Outstanding Research Achievement Award from the University of South Florida for the year 2020.

Dr. Ben-Herut recently completed co-translating selections from the Ragaḷe hagiographical collection for a book-length publication (under review). This project is funded by the American Academy of Religion’s Collaborative International Research Grant. His publications include a co-translation of a twelfth-century Kannada treatise about poetics, encyclopedic entries, a co-edited volume, book chapters, and peer-reviewed articles. Dr. Ben-Herut is the co-founder of the Regional Bhakti Scholars Network, a platform for facilitating scholarly conversations about South Asian devotional traditions.

Utilizing his extensive experience in computer programming, Dr. Ben-Herut also leads several digital humanities projects, including digital ROSES and BHAVA. He is a member of the Digital India Learning Committee of the American Institute of Indian Studies and an active collaborator in digital projects about South Asian texts and languages involving open-source and open-access environments.

The textual “biography” of the vachana corpus – an expanding collection of devotional and lyrical poetry in Kannada from the twelfth century – spans over several key moments in the history of South India, starting with an innovative devotional practice of personal oral proclamations and then developing into a written canon that served as the fulcrum for a new religious sect, until finally becoming a cultural tool for biting social critique in the modern period. Dr. Ben-Herut’s Fulbright-Nehru project is examining how, nine centuries after their appearance, the vachanas became the most cherished literature in Kannada and an exemplar of sorts for spiritual poetry around the world.

Lauren Bausch

Prof. Lauren Bausch teaches at Dharma Realm Buddhist University, located in the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Ukiah, California. A specialist in the philosophy of the Brāhmaṇa texts, she is interested in exploring the relationship between Vedic tradition and early Indian Buddhism. She is the editor of Self, Sacrifice, and Cosmos: Vedic Thought, Ritual, and Philosophy (2019) and has written articles such as “The Kāṇva Brāhmaṇas and Buddhists in Kosala”, “Philosophy of Language in the Ṛgveda”, and “Bráhman as the Absolute in Late Brāhmaṇa Texts”. She completed her PhD in Sanskrit from the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2015.

Including a life-changing undergraduate semester in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Delhi and three semesters of dissertation fieldwork at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Prof. Bausch has been to India to study languages, conduct research, deliver lectures, and to volunteer. She has given invited lectures at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, the National Museum, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Savitribai Phule Pune University. She received the first annual International Association of Sanskrit Studies’ Honorary Research Fellowship in 2019 and organized a Vedic conference at Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune.

Prof. Bausch looks forward to building a community of scholars and practitioners that facilitates collaboration among Vedic and Buddhist specialists in the United States and India. She hopes that the book resulting from this Fulbright-Nehru research touches its readers by revealing something about their roots and will also give scholars of Hinduism a more comprehensive understanding of Vedic tradition and scholars of Buddhism a sound basis for understanding the cultural background of Gotama’s teachings.

Prof. Bausch’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating the philosophy of language and causality that is articulated in middle and late Vedic texts. She is identifying and examining the discourses within these texts around the nature of man and the absolute creating itself to experience relativity, while situating the philosophy of the Brāhmaṇa texts in the intellectual history of India. Rather than interpreting ritual activity through the lens of Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, her research is probing the cosmologies, mythologies, and explanatory connections found throughout the Brāhmaṇa texts themselves. The results are expected to shed more light on the relationship between late Vedic thought and early Buddhism.

Sumin Yoon

Sumin Yoon has a bachelor’s degree in anthropology from Rice University, Texas, with a minor in biochemistry and cell biology. Previously, he worked as a researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center and as a research coordinator at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Sumin has also conducted ethnographic research at an HIV/AIDS hospice, documenting caregiving practices for terminally ill HIV/AIDS patients. He has presented his research at national and international conferences, and was awarded the 2023 W.H.R Rivers Undergraduate Paper Prize by the Society for Medical Anthropology. While at Rice, Sumin received the Loewenstern Fellowship to collaborate with the Kiyita Family Alliance for Development and the Infectious Disease Institute in Uganda, where he helped implement a RAID (risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies) assessment of the barriers to tuberculosis care. Outside of work, Sumin enjoys reading, running, spending time with friends and family, and creative writing.

In his Fulbright-Nehru research project, Sumin is studying how the decriminalization of homosexuality in India through the repeal of Indian Penal Code Section 377 has impacted HIV care access among the queer community in Hyderabad. He is conducting participant observations and semi-structured interviews with physicians, NGOs, and people with HIV to assess the extent to which political freedom from decriminalization has translated into health equity in the field. Through his research findings, he hopes to inform global health organizations on how to better address the political and social determinants of health to curb the persisting HIV epidemic in India.

Aditya Yelamali

Aditya Yelamali holds a bachelor’s degree in biology and anthropology with a concentration in global health and environment from Washington University in St. Louis. Throughout his academic journey, he has worked on a number of pursuits that aim to utilize scientific inquiry to make a longitudinal impact on research and public health efforts. He has conducted both clinical and translational research in hematology/oncology, with a focus on exploring innovative and less toxic conditioning strategies and compounds for blood transplantation; this has resulted in several publications and presentations. Aditya also founded and leads Hearts for Arts, an organization dedicated to providing healing and arts-based activities for children in the St. Louis area; this organization has forged partnerships with various establishments throughout St. Louis to make a positive impact on hundreds of youth and pediatric patients by providing spaces for healing and interaction, and also improving mental health through trauma-informed care. Aditya’s dedication to social justice and public health extended to his work as a St. Louis Fellow Scholar with the Gephardt Institute, where he spearheaded efforts to combat HIV-related stigma. Inspired by his experiences working with frontline HIV workers, Aditya’s senior thesis delved into the intricacies of care delivery.

Aditya’s Fulbright-Nehru Research project is focusing on understanding the barriers and decision-making factors that influence adolescents seeking mental healthcare in Mysuru, Karnataka. The project is addressing the lack of dialogue on mental health between parents and adolescents, particularly in culturally sensitive contexts. In collaboration with JSS Medical College, the study is exploring parental hesitancy and gender dynamics that affect adolescent mental healthcare access. Through qualitative research involving interviews with parents, educators, and adolescents, Aditya’s project is identifying the factors that perpetuate stigma, thereby informing interventions to enhance mental health literacy. This research will contribute to global discussions on adolescent mental health disparities and promote community-based approaches toward reforms.

Alexander Williams

Alexander Williams is a joint JD–PhD student in history and law at Yale University. His research focuses on the history of corporate governance, capital markets, labor, and the legal profession in postcolonial India. He is broadly interested in global legal history, comparative private law, and the history and sociology of the legal profession. He has published in the Asian Journal of Comparative Law and the JUS GENTIUM Journal of International Legal History. He holds a BA in history and South Asian studies from Yale College.

Alexander’s Fulbright-Nehru project, “The Business of Law: Lawyers and the Economy in Modern India”, is studying the intertwined history of law, lawyers, and economic development in postcolonial India. The project is tracing how legal professionals and other actors in both the government and the private sector viewed law as a tool which could be harnessed for economic growth, the distribution of resources, and the pursuit of private ends.

Harshini Venkatachalam

Harshini Venkatachalam has a BA in computer science and visual art from Brown University. For six semesters, she was a teaching assistant in the computer science department at Brown and received a Senior Prize for contributions to the department. Harshini is broadly interested in using computing and technology for social good.

Harshini’s Fulbright-Nehru project is developing technology to help learners develop computational thinking skills. Computational thinking encompasses a range of skills in problem solving and system design, with one key skill being abstraction – the ability to overcome complexity by generalizing solutions. Harshini’s project is motivated by the need to understand how novice programmers learn abstraction within the existing pedagogy and thus develop novel methods to help them learn abstraction. During her study, in the course of development of tools, data is also being collected about participant engagement. The deliverables of the project include a novel tool (a mobile application), a literature review, and a detailed report.

Samhita Vasu

Samhita Vasu graduated from Johns Hopkins Engineering on a Hodson Trust Scholarship with a BS in biomedical engineering in May 2024. She is interested in the use of microphysiological systems, medical device design, data science, and signal processing to help understand, diagnose, and treat life-threatening diseases. At Johns Hopkins, she worked on heart-on-chip assays for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) drug screening, as well as on the use of engineered heart tissues to study mitochondrial dysfunction in DMD; she also studied the neurodevelopmental outcomes of renal anhydramnios fetal therapy. Besides, she worked in Stanford’s Cardiac MRI Research Group to study cardiac MRI texture analysis for better tracking of the disease progression of DMD. As an intern for NASA Ames Research Center, she developed a spaceflight environmental data visualization tool for the Rodent Research missions to the International Space Station. Apart from research, Samhita was involved in the Johns Hopkins’ Biomedical Engineering Design Teams program, through which she designed, built, and validated various medical devices and solutions. One such project involved building a flexible arthroscope to increase visualization to the posterior compartment of the knee. Another project involved building a more precise shave biopsy device to prevent melanoma transection. She also led a team to develop a generative AI, image-based medical information translation solution for patients with low English proficiency. Samhita was the first author of an article titled “Biomaterials-based Approaches for Cardiac Regeneration” and was also awarded the Dr. Stanley Hellerstein Memorial Travel Award.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is a debilitating condition that impacts around 140 million people in India. Fifty per cent of patients with CKD in India are first seen by a healthcare professional when their disease has progressed to the extent of kidney failure. Given India’s low physician-to-patient ratio, at-home monitoring can expedite diagnosis and improve treatment. In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Samhita is working with CKD specialists to design and validate a saliva-based creatinine sensor that can measure kidney function at home. The goal is to develop a working device that helps catch CKD symptoms early in at-risk patients.