Scholars 2022: Mustafa Shahid, Pooja Chaudhuri, Pushkar Mohile and Radhani Jagadish Kumar
In Part 2 of our three part series, we present scholars, Mustafa Shahid, Pooja Chaudhuri, Pushkar Mohile and Radhani Jagadish Kumar.
Mustafa will be pursuing the Masters in Space Studies degree from the International Space University, Strasbourg, Pooja will be pursuing MS in Data Journalism at Columbia University, Pushkar will be undertaking an MA in Physics at Stonybrook University, New York and Radhani will be studying an MA Economics at Columbia University, New York.
Mustafa Shahid
Mustafa Shahid will be pursuing the Masters in Space Studies degree from the International Space University, Strasbourg, with a specific orientation towards space policy and space law.
In 2017, he graduated with a B.Tech in Avionics from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology. Since then he has been working with the Indian Space Research Organization as a launch vehicle project engineer.
On completion of his master’s degree, he aims to make a positive contribution towards the booming space sector in India by helping devise policies for synergistic collaboration between the government, academia and industry.
Apart from his academic and professional interests, he possess an active interest in trekking, running, racket sports and volunteering activities. He was also awarded the All-Rounder Gold Medal upon graduation from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology.
Pooja Chaudhuri
Pooja Chaudhuri has a Bachelor's degree in Commerce from Jadavpur University. However, soon after graduating, she found her calling in the field of journalism. For the past four years, she has been working with Alt News, a fact-checking organisation that debunks political and communal misinformation, and monitors online hate speech. She was a senior editor at Alt News when she was awarded the Inlaks Scholarship.
In the age of the internet, social media is used to amplify feelings of unfounded fear. Politicians have been known to harness social media to confirm existing biases against protected categories. Pooja works in the field of mis/disinformation to report on the issues faced by India’s most vulnerable communities. She wanted to bring to the fore the power of disinformation to amplify majority authoritarianism. She has authored stories on communal misinformation, including misleading reportage in the media during the Delhi riots and tracing the men behind the infamous ‘Sulli Deals’ app. She also co-authored the alleged Congress ‘toolkit’ story during the farmers’ protest which led Delhi police to serve notice to Twitter after the platform added a ‘manipulated media’ tag on several posts by BJP politicians.
Pooja will be pursuing MS in Data Journalism at Columbia University where she hopes to hone her skills to extract and analyse data while reporting on the menace of disinformation. She believes that the course will allow her to better report on organised disinformation. Pooja also wishes to actively work toward media and digital literacy to enable people to verify information themselves.
Pushkar Mohile
Pushkar Mohile recently completed a B.Tech. in Engineering Physics from IIT Bombay. He is interested in mathematical and theoretical physics, subjects in which he aspires to pursue a career in research and academia. His main areas of interest lie in fields with beautiful connections and symmetry found in the study of High Energy and Statistical Physics. Several such surprising connections have been found across the last few decades between areas of physics that at first glance appear to have nothing to do with each other.
The existence of such connections signifies an underlying universal truth that can only be found through the pursuit of the mathematical foundations of physics, which he finds very exciting. He has also studied several ideas in modern mathematics, and is continually amazed by the concrete applications found in physics of seemingly overtly abstract ideas in mathematics. He is very interested in pursuing applications of category theory and geometry in modern physics. He is also an avid debater at the intervarsity level, and was part of one of the best performing teams from India in 2020, reaching the semi-finals of the Asian British Parliamentary championship. He believes debating is also related to his passion for the pursuit of ideas and connections between them.
The Inlaks scholarship will enable him to study under some of the best faculty in the world in mathematical and theoretical physics at Stony Brook University, New York. The unique collaboration between mathematics and physics fostered at the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, among the world’s leading research centres in this area will be very conducive to his growth as a physicist and research, and he looks forward to his learning experiences there.
Radhani Jagadish Kumar
As an Indian student who majored in Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics in high school, it was counterintuitive for Radhani Jagadish Kumar to steer clear of an Engineering degree and take a leap towards Economics for her undergraduate studies, but that’s exactly what she did. Over the past four years her appreciation for Economics has grown because it fulfills her zeal for both quantitative reasoning, and the qualitative examination of individual behaviours and larger level interactions. For her undergraduate thesis at Shiv Nadar University, she researched the relationship between India's MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) and caste-based conflict under the guidance of her advisor. She hypothesized that the socio-economic uplifting of Scheduled Castes through employment under MGNREGA, has the potential to impact crime against Scheduled Castes. Her results showed a significant rise in crime against SCs post the implementation of MGNREGA, supported by empirical evidence of a backlash from upper castes due to the reducing economic gap between the two groups.
Outside the academia, she analysed governance issues in Tamil Nadu as a project consultant for the Oxford Policy Advisory Group (OPAG), as part of a comprehensive governance report prepared for OPAG’s client, the Dravidian Professionals Forum. Working with colleagues from law and sociology backgrounds revealed the immense possibilities that arise from combining Economics with other social sciences, in tackling real-world problems. She will now be pursuing the MA Economics program at Columbia University, New York, with the help of the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Scholarship, where she hopes to explore the subject in further depth and gain additional experience in applied economic research along the way.
Her hobbies outside of academics include playing volleyball and running. She is an avid reader as well - ‘A Suitable Boy’ by Vikram Seth and ‘Shogun’ by James Clavell are few of her all-time favourites.
