California: Ten Indian Americans were among 173 people named 2018 Guggenheim Fellows by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation’s board of trustees. The recipients and the fields in which they won the fellowships are: astronomy-astrophysics: Shrinivas Kulkarni; engineering: Arup K. Chakraborty; neuroscience: Aniruddh D. Patel; South Asian studies: Archana Venkatesan; choreography: Aparna Ramaswamy and Ranee Ramaswamy; film-video: Parvez Sharma and Nandini Sikand; photography: Pradip Malde; and poetry: Srikanth Reddy.
The successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s 94th competition. In all, 49 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 69 different academic institutions, 31 states, and three Canadian provinces are represented in this year’s class of Fellows, who range in age from 29 to 80.
Edward Hirsch, president of the Foundation, said: “It’s exceptionally satisfying to name 175 new Guggenheim Fellows. These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best.”
Shrinivas (“Shri”) R. Kulkarni is a George E. Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. After an early career in guiding the engineering of polymers and catalysts using quantum mechanical calculations, since 2000, Arup Chakraborty’s work has focused on bringing together immunology and the physical and engineering sciences; more specifically, the intersection of statistical mechanics and immunology.
Aniruddh (Ani) Patel is a cognitive neuroscientist at Tufts University, where he conducts research on music and the brain in the Department of Psychology. Archana Venkatesan is associate professor of comparative literature and religious studies at the University of California, Davis. Aparna Ramaswamy is co-artistic director, choreographer, and principal dancer of Ragamala Dance Company with her choreographic partner (and mother) Ranee Ramaswamy.
Filmmaker and author Parvez Sharma grew up in a small town in northern India, just 20 minutes from the Islamic seminary that gave birth to the Taliban, while enrolled at a Catholic (missionary) school called St. Mary’s Academy. In 2006, the U.S. government designated him an “Alien with Extraordinary Abilities.”
Born and raised in New Delhi, Nandini Sikand is a filmmaker, dancer-choreographer, author and cultural anthropologist. Pradip Malde is a photographer and teaches at the University of the South, Sewanee, TN. Srikanth Reddy is the author of ‘Voyager’, which was named one of the best books of poetry in 2011 by The New Yorker, The Believer, and National Public Radio.
the Guggenheim Foundation has granted more than $360 million in Fellowships to over 18,000 individuals, among whom are scores of Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, poets laureate, members of the various national academies, and winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Turing Award, National Book Awards, and other important, internationally recognized honors.
