Scholars 2024: Prajwal Bhat, Srinika Selvam and Ajinkya Dekhane
In part 1 of our 4-part series introducing the 2024 Inlaks Scholars, meet Prajwal Bhat, Srinika Selvam and Ajinkya Dekhane.
Prajwal will be attending Columbia University for an MA in Journalism, Srinika will be pursuing an M.Sc. in Communications and Signal Processing from Imperial College London and Ajinkya will be studying for a Masters of Architecture (Urban Design) degree at Harvard University.
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Prajwal Bhat
Prajwal Bhat is a journalist based in Bengaluru, with seven years of experience. He has worked with The News Minute, a digital news publication, on news reports, investigative stories and features journalism focusing on diversity, inequality and community cohesion in south India.
He received the Ramnath Goenka Award in the category of 'Reporting on Politics and Government' in 2022 for reporting on a series of stories from Karnataka on the student protests that followed a government ban on the wearing of hijabs or headscarves in colleges in the state.
He was also part of a team of reporters that investigated large-scale voter data theft by a private company in Bengaluru. The Election Commission of India blacklisted the private company and ordered a re-verification of voter lists in three constituencies following the investigation. The team of reporters received a special mention for their work at the Asian College of Journalism awards in 2022.
Prajwal is going to study at the Columbia Journalism School's Master of Arts programme. He hopes to use his time in Columbia to understand better how political and personal histories can be weaved into reportage on contemporary events. He is also looking to meet the team of international journalists at Columbia and get a grasp on journalistic practices elsewhere in the world.
Srinika Selvam
Originally from Chennai, Tamil Nadu, Srinika pursued her undergraduate studies in Electronics and Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Thiruvananthapuram, fully funded by the Department of Space. It was during this time that she developed a keen interest in estimating 3D poses of humans from images using artificial intelligence. Her academic journey was further enriched by an internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, in 2018, sponsored by the California Institute of Technology.
Since 2019, she has been a vital part of the U.R Rao Satellite Centre of ISRO in Bengaluru, contributing to the development of high-throughput payload data transmitters for Low Earth Orbit and deep-space satellite missions. Projects like the Chandrayaan-3 Lander module and Aditya-L1 have allowed her to deepen her expertise in wireless communication systems.
Now, she has decided to embark on her Master’s journey at Imperial College, London, specializing in Communication and Signal Processing. Her goal is to enhance her skills in 3D data reconstruction and leverage embedded machine intelligence for adaptive signal processing, particularly focusing on real-time decision-making and improving system efficiency, especially in noise rejection and wireless transmission through embedded AI.
She envisions her contributions making a significant technological and social impact, particularly in applications such as VR-based 3D image visualization, autonomous vehicle terrain mapping, and advanced medical 3D imaging for precise surgical planning. Beyond her academic and professional pursuits, she likes playing table tennis, hiking, and discovering new restaurants.
Ajinkya Dekhane
Ajinkya Dekhane is an architect and artist from Mumbai. His practice looks at the persistence and historical influence of Caste over the genesis and everyday mechanisms of Indian cities. As an Inlaks scholar, he will be pursuing a Master's in Architecture and Urban Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In his study, he intends to learn from the historical tools of oppression employed in the formation of cities such as racialized planning and peripheralization. He aspires to conduct a comparative study between Caste-oppressed neighborhoods in India and racially ghettoized neighborhoods in the West.
He is fascinated with the revolutionary imaginations of cities often produced through myths, oral histories, and folklore such as the story of ‘Begumpura’ a casteless city written about by Guru Raidas in the 13th century, or ‘Bali-Rajjya’ a mythical city without discrimination invoked through folk songs by Bahujan communities in Maharashtra. His art practice explores and documents the Ambedkarite movement and its force that shapes and has historically shaped cities, especially Bombay. With his practice, he is constantly working to re-imagine Dalit epistemes and aesthetics. His work has since been featured across international publications like ‘Suddhashar’ and galleries such as ‘The Showroom, London’ and is also the director of Mavelinadu - an anti caste publishing house. He intends to work on and build a pedagogy that critically analyzes Caste in the practice of Urban Design which also produces the tools to dismantle it.
To know more about the Inlaks scholarship, visit our website here.
