Archives: Meet Our USA Fulbrighters

Aditi Anand

Aditi Anand is an undergraduate student majoring in computer engineering at Purdue University. She is also pursuing a minor in biology and a concentration in artificial intelligence (AI). Aditi intends to pursue a career in healthcare and is specifically interested in applications of AI in the field of medicine. Her research has explored creating more brain-like artificial neural networks; improving the robustness of AI models used in medical imaging; and early and low-cost diagnosis of congestive heart failure. Aditi has received the Presidential Scholarship, Paul and Peggy Reising Scholarship, Stimson Family Scholarship, and Charles W. Brown Scholarship, all from Purdue University. She has also received the National Honorable Mention Award for Aspirations in Computing from the National Center for Women & Information Technology and the Sigma Xi Top STEM Talk Award at the Purdue Spring Undergraduate Research Conference. Aditi has served as a crisis intervention specialist for Mental Health America; as an emergency room volunteer at the IU Arnett Hospital, Lafayette; as vice chair of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Purdue Student Chapter; as vice president of WorldHealth Purdue; and as event coordinator for the Indian Classical Music Association at Purdue. She has also volunteered for Udavum Karangal, Chennai, organizing personal hygiene and health awareness workshops, and for the Ankit Foundation Corp to develop a mobile app for mental health.

In her Fulbright-Nehru program, Aditi is working with the Robert Bosch Center for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Indian Institute of Technology (RBC-DSAI) in Chennai to develop a high-performing AI model that can be deployed in Indian clinical conditions to diagnose breast cancer through low-cost mammograms. The model that she is developing with Dr. Balaraman Ravindran’s team at RBC-DSAI seeks to overcome the challenges that India and other countries face due to lack of resources and access to radiologists.

Ria Agarwal

Ria Agarwal recently graduated from Tufts University with a double major in international relations and civic studies. Originally from Salt Lake City, Utah, her academic focus includes human rights, international law, and migration studies.

In her professional capacity, Ria worked as a legal assistant at Cambridge Immigration Law, where she prepared legal documents, conducted asylum case research, and performed community outreach. She also interned with the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, where she contributed to research and provided legal assistance for refugees.

Ria’s commitment to civic engagement is evident in her roles with Blue Future and the Asian Pacific American Public Affairs Association, where she played a key part in voter registration and AAPI advocacy efforts. Additionally, as a journalist at The Fulcrum platform, she published articles exploring voter suppression and the impact of state policies during COVID-19.

Beyond her professional endeavors, Ria is passionate about Indian classical dance, enjoys reading, and loves spending time outdoors.

Ria’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring the challenges faced by Bangladeshi migrants in India who had been displaced from their country by climate-related disasters. Situated in Delhi, her research is addressing the lack of formal refugee status for these individuals, which strips them of essential protections and makes them vulnerable to exploitation. The study is assessing both Indian and international legal frameworks to evaluate their effectiveness in safeguarding the rights and well-being of climate-displaced migrants. Through legal analysis, expert interviews, and collaboration with the Migration and Asylum Project, Ria aims to generate actionable insights and influence policy discussions on migration and climate adaptation.

Abel Abraham

Abel Abraham completed his BS in mathematics and biomedical engineering from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). He will be joining the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering to pursue his PhD following his Fulbright-Nehru research period. Abel’s broad interests are in active matter and its intrinsic connections to biology. He specifically wants to understand collective behaviors and the emergence of order and organization in multicellular systems.

Abel is an experimentalist who tries to understand complex systems from the perspective of physical and mathematical principles. During his four-year degree program, while working with Prof. Pedro Saenz at UNC’s Physical Mathematics Lab, he was experimenting with vibrated fluid interfaces, particularly Faraday waves and walking droplets. His experiments with Faraday waves demonstrated similar statistical features with non-equilibrium systems at different scales, leading to a paper under review of which he is a co-author. Abel has also done experiments and simulations to show an absence of diffusion in walking droplets which is analogous to the localization of electrons in disordered potentials. This led to his first-author paper which is also under review.

In his Fulbright-Nehru program, Abel is working with Prof. Shashi Thutupalli in the Simon’s Centre for the Study of Living Machines at the National Centre for Biological Sciences. He is studying active matter systems of stronger biological connection like active droplets and polymers, and exploring how memory affects the dynamics of these active droplet and polymer systems. In this process, Abel aims to gain more experience in the space between physics and biology, which is where he will continue working during his PhD.

Ashwini Tambe

Dr. Ashwini Tambe is professor of history and director of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at George Washington University. She is a scholar of gender and law in South Asia and of transnational feminist theory. Over the past two decades, she has written about how South Asian societies regulate sexual practices. Her 2009 book, Codes of Misconduct: Regulating Prostitution in Late Colonial Bombay (University of Minnesota Press), traces how law-making and law-enforcement practices shaped the rise of the city’s red-light district. Her 2019 book, Defining Girlhood in India: A Transnational Approach to Sexual Maturity Laws (University of Illinois Press), examines the legal paradoxes in age standards for girls’ sexual consent in India. She has also published the co-edited volumes, Transnational Feminist Itineraries (with Millie Thayer) and The Limits of British Colonial Control in South Asia (with Harald Fischer-Tiné). Her most recent journal articles have appeared in Feminist Formations, American Historical Review, and South Asia. She is also the editorial director of Feminist Studies, the oldest U.S. journal of feminist interdisciplinary scholarship.

Dr. Tambe holds a PhD in international relations from American University, Washington, D.C., and has taught at the University of Maryland and the University of Toronto. She has supervised doctoral dissertations on a wide range of topics, including the history of women’s studies; sports and gender; and religion and sexuality. In 2018, she received the Graduate Mentor of the Year Award from the University of Maryland.

Dr. Tambe’s Fulbright-Nehru project is exploring feminist debates on appropriate punishment for sexual harm, with a focus on the impact of digital activism. This is an important time in India to pose questions about such punishment since a new legal code, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, recently replaced the Indian Penal Code. At this time of intense deliberation over regulating gender justice, Dr. Tambe is based in a premier legal education site, the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), researching cases of digital retribution, defamation lawsuits, and caste barriers to seeking justice in cases of sexual violence.

Eric Davidson

Dr. Eric Davidson is professor of the Appalachian Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, where he served as director for six years. His research areas include terrestrial nutrient cycling, greenhouse gas emissions from soils, global biogeochemical cycles, and sustainable agriculture. Dr. Davidson is a past president and fellow of the American Geophysical Union; a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and a highly cited researcher in Web of Science. He served as the North American Center director for the International Nitrogen Initiative and as a NASA project scientist for the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia. Dr. Davidson was also a Jefferson Science Fellow. He currently serves as senior editor for AGU Advances. He previously served as an editor for Global Biogeochemical Cycles, Global Change Biology, and Soil Science Society of America Journal. Dr. Davidson received his PhD from the Department of Forestry at North Carolina State University and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in soil microbiology at the University of California at Berkeley and at the NASA Ames Research Center. He worked for 22 years at the Woods Hole Research Center, including a term as president and executive director. He is the author of Science for a Green New Deal: Connecting Climate, Economics, and Social Justice and You Can’t Eat GNP.

Only about half of the nitrogen applied to croplands as fertilizers and manures goes into harvested products; the remainder is mostly lost as air and water pollution. Dr. Davidson’s Fulbright-Nehru project is investigating the potential impacts of the coming green ammonia transformation for fertilizers in India within the broader context of sustainable nitrogen management. In this regard, he is interviewing experts and stakeholders from government ministries, the fertilizer industry, schools of agronomy and environmental sciences, farmer groups, and biotechnology innovators to ascertain their awareness of green ammonia technology and their expectations of positive and negative consequences for agricultural productivity, economics, farmer well-being, and environmental quality.

Holly Wise

Ms. Holly Wise is the program operations manager at the nonprofit Solutions Journalism Network and an adjunct lecturer at Kent State University and Tri-C Community College. Formerly a journalism lecturer at Texas State University in San Marcos, where she taught advanced news-writing and multimedia courses, and introduced a solutions journalism course, Ms. Wise now works solely to advance the practice of solutions journalism in newsrooms, journalism schools, and organizations that support journalism. She was a recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Teaching Award in 2018 and taught solutions journalism at Mt. Carmel College, Bengaluru, during 2018–2019. Ms. Wise is also the founder of VoiceBox Media, which conducts rigorous analysis of how people solve social problems within their communities. She is a frequent speaker at national journalism conferences and also delivers guest lectures at universities in the United States and Canada.

Ms. Wise was the part-time director of journalism school engagement at the Solutions Journalism Network and during this stint, she consulted with journalism professors and lecturers on creating solutions journalism curriculum for their respective schools. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s degree in mass communication from Murray State University.

For her Fulbright-Nehru project, Ms. Wise is teaching students and local journalists the practice of reporting on climate-related problems through a solutions journalism lens. She is also facilitating trainings for journalists who are already part of her extensive network in India. Further, by collaborating with the faculty at Christ, she is modifying the news-writing curriculum so as to incorporate solutions journalism modules into in it; she is also implementing a module of solutions journalism lectures and assignments designed for journalism professors. Besides, she is planning to co-host a regional conference for journalists in order to learn about their experiences in covering climate through a solutions journalism framework.

Jyotika Ramaprasad

Dr. Jyotika Ramaprasad is professor in the School of Communication at the University of Miami, Florida. Her major teaching areas are: communication and global social change; cultures and communication; media literacy; communication theory; participatory action research; and quantitative research methods. She is trained in dialogic pedagogy and is now under training to teach a course on collaborative learning across cultures. Her current research is in international communication, social change communication, and journalism studies.

Dr. Ramaprasad has been involved in curriculum development in East and Southern Africa and South Asia. Her work in Europe involves teaching in Austria and working in North Macedonia with the Romas and healthcare providers to facilitate social change towards more positive interactions. Her health-related social change communication work has been implemented in Uganda, and health is the focus of her current project with migrants in Florida. Besides, Dr. Ramaprasad’s environmental projects have been implemented in Vietnam (on flood preparedness) and Miami (on artificial coral reef development and testing).

Dr. Ramaprasad’s research has been published in reputed journals like Social Marketing Quarterly, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, International Communication Research Journal, Asian Journal of Communication, Mass Communication and Society, The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Journal of Advertising, and Digital Journalism. She has also edited two books, one of which received the 2020 Best Book Award of the International Journal of Press/Politics. She is on the editorial board of publications like Journalism and Mass Communication, Journalism Studies, and International Communication Research Journal. Dr. Ramaprasad has also served as vice dean for graduate studies at the University of Miami and as associate and interim dean at Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Dr. Ramaprasad’s Fulbright-Nehru project is involved in teaching social change communication in instructional settings and through experiential engagement in a community social issue to enable participatory learning and outreach. The goal is to guide ethical corporate social responsibility among MICA’s business students and to localize solutions and creative communication through research-based understanding of community culture and communication practices.

Mary (Dyan) McGuire

Dr. Mary (Dyan) McGuire is the director of the criminology and criminal justice (CCJ) programs at Saint Louis University (SLU). She also founded and directs the CCJ BA and JD program at SLU. She holds a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center and a PhD in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Prior to entering academia, she worked as a judicial clerk for the first female justice of the Missouri Supreme Court. She has also worked as an assistant attorney general for the State of Missouri and as an associate with Sonnenschein, Nath & Rosenthal.

Dr. McGuire is a committed educator. She has received numerous teaching prizes, including the Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award and was recently named the Reichmann Professor for Excellence in Teaching at SLU. She has been spearheading efforts at inclusive, multicultural education at SLU and has developed a number of classes on the subject, including “Multiculturalism for CJ Professionals”. Her research interests involve the intersection of law and practice, systemic race and gender bias as well as violence that impacts women. Her work has been published extensively in peer-reviewed journals like the Journal of Criminal Justice and Law, Gender Issues, and Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health.

Dr. McGuire’s Fulbright-Nehru project is designed to expand students’ understanding of the problem of gender bias as manifested in social structures like the legal system and social arrangements like patriarchy and how these circumstances facilitate acts of violence and oppression against women and girls. As part of the project, she is teaching three classes at the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata: “Women’s Rights and International Law”; Understanding Serial Killers through Criminology”; and “Violence Against Women”. All three classes focus on gender equity, violence against women, and/or the social construction of crime, and is intended to expand, especially in the context of domestic and international legal systems, her students’ understanding of social forces influencing the lived experiences of women and girls.

Christine Farias

Dr. Christine Farias has a PhD in environmental economics from Texas Tech University and is an associate professor of economics in the Department of Social Sciences, Human Services and Criminal Justice at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York, where she teaches regular and honors courses in microeconomics, macroeconomics, environmental economics, and labor economics using a human values, poverty, ecological, and global sustainability lens. Dr. Farias also co-directs a multi-year project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities that aims to bring poverty-focused humanities texts into her college classrooms across the curriculum. As the faculty advisor to the Economics Equality and Environment Student Academic Club, she also guides an interdisciplinary group of student officers to be leaders by creating awareness about local and global issues focusing on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

Her specific areas of interest are: ecological economics; poverty; deforestation and land use; sustainability; and action learning pedagogy. Her research focuses on the tensions arising out of sustainability and traditional economic perspectives and explores the dynamics between them. In addition to her sustainability-related publications, she has written on pedagogical issues based on her teaching innovations and experiences in the classroom. She has publications in several peer-reviewed journals focusing on themes mostly connected with sustainability and has presented her research at various domestic and international conferences.

In her Fulbright-Nehru project, Dr. Farias is teaching environmental, ecological, and labor economics in the context of business and sustainable development; she is also involved in mentor–student research projects, developing curriculum, and collaborating on research with the host faculty. Besides, she is designing experiential learning opportunities for students to explore opportunities of collaborations and partnerships with colleagues at her host institution as part of enhancing the economics program at her home institution.

Liesl Schwabe

Ms. Liesl Schwabe is a writer and educator. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Words Without Borders, and LitHub. She was awarded the 2020 Donald Murray Prize and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Ms. Schwabe has been a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar and was a scholar associate at the Institute of Language Studies and Research Kolkata, where she facilitated writing workshops for the faculty and graduate students. In 2024, she was named an English Language Specialist by the U.S. Department of State. Formerly the director of the Writing Program at Yeshiva College, she currently oversees the Writing Center and the Writing Across the Curriculum program at Berkshire Community College. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars.

The teaching portion of Ms. Schwabe’s Fulbright-Nehru project involves setting up writing workshops for undergraduate and graduate students; it is also working on the professional development of the faculty interested in integrating more writing instruction into their classes. For the research portion of this project, she is writing a collection of essays that explore specific instances of U.S. and Indian interactions – artistic, environmental, and social. The cornerstone essay is focusing on the play, Maanusher Adhikare (The Rights of Man), written and performed in Bengali in 1968, which is on the 1930s trials of the Scottsboro Boys in Alabama. Blending personal narrative, historical context, and contemporary reporting, the collection is about the limitations and possibilities of solidarity, while illuminating upon interdependence and shared humanity.

Ultimately, Ms. Schwabe hopes to establish a writing and research center in Kolkata which will serve as a resource for a consortium of public universities, with its workshops and one-on-one support for student and faculty, along with research and publication. She believes that writing centers help foster curiosity and exchange of ideas, on the page, around the campus, and in the world.