2026 Award Winners
Each year, the Mittal Institute funds faculty-led research that brings together scholars across disciplines and geographies to explore issues central to South Asia. The program prioritizes interdisciplinary projects and collaborations between Harvard faculty and academic partners across the region. We’re pleased to announce this year’s grant recipients and highlight their research below.
Responding to Impacts of Climate Driven Extreme Weather Events on Mental Health in Coastal West Bengal
Principal Investigator: Gaurab Basu, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Assistant Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
National Workshop in India on Informal Livelihoods and Climate Impacts: Toward Inclusive Urban Climate Policies and Informal Worker-Centered Resilience
Principal Investigator: Martha Chen, Lecturer in Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Affiliated Professor, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Technical Lives: Artisanal and Architectural Cultures in Early Modern South Asia
Principal Investigator: Eric Moses Gurevitch, Assistant Professor of the History of Science, Department of the History of Science
Can the World be Your Oyster?: Parenting Adolescents for Adulthood in a Globalizing Sri Lankan Economy
Principal Investigator: Nancy E. Hill, Charles Bigelow Professor of Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Textiles and Architectural Design in Postcolonial India
Principal Investigator: Vishal Khandelwal, Assistant Professor of History of Art and Architecture, Department of History of Art + Architecture
Architectures of Transition: Emergent Practices in South Asia
Principal Investigator: Rahul Mehrotra, John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization, Harvard Graduate School of Design
Machine Learning Approaches to Understand and Mitigate Human-Elephant Interactions
Principal Investigator: Venkatesh N. Murthy, Raymond Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Islamic Environments and Environmentalisms: Lessons on Multispeciesism from South Asia, on Times of Climate Crisis
Principal Investigator: Teren Sevea, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Associate Professor of Islamic Studies, Harvard Divinity School
Creating CHIRON: Children’s Rapid Omnibus Health Screener
Principal Investigator: Pawan Sinha, Professor, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Granular Estimates of the Health Impacts of Environmental Risks in India
Principal Investigator: SV Subramanian, Professor of Population Health and Geography, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Youth for Emotional and Social Support (YESS) Peer Intervention Model: Dissemination of Findings from the Pilot Feasibility Study in India.
Principal Investigator: David Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health