Dr. Aashna Sharma honoured with esteemed Fulbright-Kalam Climate Postdoctoral Scholarship

Chandigarh, May 26, 2023: Dr. Aashna Sharma, a distinguished alumna of the Department of Zoology at Panjab University, has been honoured with the esteemed Fulbright-Kalam Climate Postdoctoral Scholarship. This prestigious scholarship recognizes outstanding individuals who possess a profound understanding of climate change and its environmental implications. The selection process for Fulbright postdoctoral scholarships from India is highly competitive, with rigorous evaluation rounds. Aashna is one of only three scholars from India to receive this esteemed Indo-US fellowship, with the other two scholars hailing from IIT Kanpur and IIT Gandhinagar.

Under the Fulbright-Kalam scholarship, Aashna will be jointly hosted by senior professors from University of Washington, Seattleand theIllinois State University, Illinois. Over the next two years, she will be based at the University of Washington, where her research project will focus on studying the impact of climate change and land-use changes on India's freshwater megafauna. Aashna emphasizes the urgent need for science-backed policy decisions to safeguard India's rivers, which require better protection compared to terrestrial ecosystems. The ongoing climate change exacerbates these challenges, making her project crucial in generating innovative scientific insights on the river segments that will require the most protection under future warming conditions. She aims to leverage her Fulbright award and tenure in the United States to strengthen climate change research in India.

Aashna specializes in freshwater ecology and has previously conducted extensive research on the effects of climate change and biological invasions on Himalayan freshwater fauna. Her research interests involve utilizing machine learning to analyse spatial patterns in riverscapes' ecology and biodiversity. She obtained her B.Sc. (Hons) and M.Sc. (Hons) degrees in Zoology from Panjab University in Chandigarh and completed her Ph.D. in the Department of Zoology at Panjab University and the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, under the joint supervision of Dr. Y.K. Rawal and Dr. J.A. Johnson, respectively. Her doctoral research focused on developing state-of-the-art models for the conservation of native Himalayan fishes. Currently serving as a Senior Project Associate at WII, Dr. Sharma plans to commence her postdoctoral project in September this year.