The Graduate School is pleased to announce the 2023-24 Fulbright U.S. Student Program Winners
Congratulations to the recipients of the 2023-24 Fulbright U.S. Student Program! The purpose of the Fulbright U.S. Student Program is to increase mutual understanding between people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge, and skills. Approximately 1,900 awards are available to over 140 countries.
Alexandra Griffin: Argentina
Alexandra is a plant ecologist and agricultural scientist, interested in the relationships between plants, soils, and the people who tend to them. She is an M.S. candidate in Applied Plant Sciences at the University of Minnesota, studying the roots of perennial grain crops for improved soil health and water quality in the Upper Midwest. With the Fulbright Research Award, she will travel to Argentina and collaborate with farmers and researchers developing agricultural strategies for soil conservation and climate change resilience.
Ribhav Gupta: India
Ribhav Gupta is a fourth year medical student stepping away from his clinical training to further his academic passions for global health and health policy research. As a Fulbright-Nehru scholar at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Ribhav will computationally model cost-effective health policies aimed at reducing transmission and mortality of Tuberculosis using a novel, point-of-care multi-drug resistance diagnostic platform. With India sharing nearly a quarter of the global Tuberculosis burden, he aims to align with national leaders and global partners to further improve treatment success through diagnostics. Future applications include exploring uses of next generation sequencing for rapid drug-sensitivity diagnostics.
Clare Harmon: Italy
Clare is an interdisciplinary artist, poet, and translator completing a PhD in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society at the University of Minnesota. Clare’s dissertation, “Grief People: Southern Vernaculars/Colonial Afterlives,” theorizes and enacts (on Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia) a world-ending translation method grounded in and indebted to Black anticolonial thought and critiques of European Renaissance humanism. For AY 2023-2024, Clare has been awarded a Fulbright fellowship Italy to complete archival research on Dante, southernness, and coloniality at the University of Naples, L’Orientale.
Adrina Kocharian: Armenia
Adrina is an MD-PhD student whose graduate work focuses on the neuroscience of decision-making. She will be conducting her Fulbright research in Armenia where she will study the psychosocial mechanisms of transgenerational trauma inheritance. By accessing archival texts, administering surveys, and holding discussion groups, Adrina will investigate transgenerational trauma from past, present, and future perspectives. She will collaborate with the Armenian Genocide Museum Institute, the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography, and the American Univeristy of Armenia to study testimonies of genocide survivors and their descendents. Adrina hopes that this work will help to reveal some of the barriers to seeking mental health care within Armenia.
Tanner Rogers: South Korea
Beginning in August 2023, Tanner will be in South Korea for ten months, thanks to the Fulbright Foundation and Fulbright Korea. Tanner’s research will consist of literary analysis of fictional texts produced during the Park Chung Hee era (1961-1979), particularly focusing on the development of “space” in its various physical and conceptual forms, and how texts engage with the rapid urbanization and industrialization of cities like Seoul and Incheon during this time.