Welcome to the Team, Beth Romanski!

Please welcome Beth Romanski, MS; Program Manager, GKII; Research Associate II, BSPH, Department of International Health as a Program Manager for the GKII team! With more than 20 years of experience, Beth will use her incredible experience to help GKII expand our educational and student engagement initiatives and opportunities. Check out her full bio!

The Gupta-Klinsky India Institute at Johns Hopkins University recently organized the “Grant Writing Workshop: Building Effective Specific Aims Pages” with the goal of equipping researchers to articulate their vision, demonstrate potential impact, and secure the financial support essential for driving innovation and transformation.

The Gupta-Klinsky India Institute at Johns Hopkins University in partnership with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, collaborated with the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA) to host a Friday Night at the Emergency Room (FNER) session as part of a public health training program for Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officers.

SPOTLIGHTS

Brian Wahl Faculty Spotlight

Associate Research Professor, International Health

Dr. Brian Wahl sees capacity strengthening as one of the most important elements for developing positive downstream effects in healthcare in India. In Uttar Pradesh, where most of his work is done, many people who are responsible for creating public health programs and executing public health functions have had limited formal training in public health, he notes.

“COVID-19 highlighted the need for multidisciplinary and interprofessional approaches to public health.”

Ameya Joshi Student Spotlight

Degree/School: SAIS/MAIR

Anticipated Graduation Date: Spring 2024

Clubs and Organizations: SAIS Student Government Association, SAIS International Finance Club

What skill did you learn at Hopkins that will be of value your whole life: The power of effective small talk as a subtle yet impactful conversation-starter

Which professor was the most influential to your studies—and why: Prof. David Keegan and Prof. David Bulman really inspired me understand China and Taiwan and I credit their efforts as the driving force behind my attempts to turn my interest on merely reading about China into a career studying China. 

If you could pick one song to be the theme song of your life, what song would you pick: Stressed Out by Twenty-One Pilots

CBID Summer Immersion Program Spotlight

In August 2023, GKII sponsored a team of CBID engineers to participate in a summer immersion program, engaging with the project on-site to deepen their insights. Ira Pundeer sat down with team members, Amina Ishrat, Lhotse Thompson, Sorush Rokui, and Luke Boyce, to learn more about their research and on-site experience.

GKII IN THE NEWS

Novel Machine Learning Method Can Improve Genetic Risk Assessments for Non-White Populations

The Hub, Oct. 2, 2023

Researchers led by Nilanjan Chatterjee, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of biostatistics and genetic epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, have developed a new method with significant potential to improve the performance of polygenic risk scores in minority populations. The method, called CT-SLEB, is detailed in a paper published in Nature Genetics.

Rama Chellappa honored with IEEE Computer Society's Distinguished Researcher Award

Whiting School of Engineering, Oct. 16, 2023

Rama Chellappa, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, has been selected to receive the Distinguished Researcher Award from IEEE Computer Society’s Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence Technical Committee.

Shekhawat, Parikh, Chellappa Awarded Catalyst Prize

Sushasan Podcast, Oct. 8, 2023

Nakul Shekhawat, M.D., M.P.H.; Kunal Parikh, PhD; Rama Chellappa, PhD of Johns Hopkins University were awarded a Catalyst Prize to develop a smartphone-based platform for screening and diagnosis of cataracts in the nursing home setting.

"Our algorithm will incorporate several innovations including bias mitigation, domain adaptation, and incorporation of clinical metadata to improve diagnostic performance."

Carey's Center for Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence wins state grant

Carey School of Business, Nov. 2, 2023

The Maryland Department of Commerce announced that it has awarded $1 million in support of the Center for Digital Health and Artificial Intelligence, also known as CDHAI, housed at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School. That award was matched by $1.97 million in qualified donations. 

"AI is poised to be truly transformational, affecting all aspects of business and society," said Wm. Polk Carey Distinguished Professor and CDHAI Co-director Ritu Agarwal. "CDHAI's research, focused on developing safe, effective, and responsible AI for health care, supports the broader university goals of conducting leading-edge research in AI and data science."

NEWS OF NOTE

Celebrating Diwali at JHU

By GKII Student Ambassador Ishir Sharma

On Saturday, Nov. 11, 2023, hundreds in the Johns Hopkins community came together to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. Celebrated in India and across the world, Diwali marks the victory of good over evil and light over darkness. In households across the world, lamps are lit to mark this auspicious festival, one of the most important holidays of the year. The Homewood Diwali celebration, the largest student-run campus event of the year, is organized by the Hindu Students Council.

Joint Statement on the Fifth Annual India-U.S. 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue

US Department of State, Nov. 10, 2023

Minister of Defense Rajnath Singh and Minister of External Affairs Dr. S. Jaishankar welcomed Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III for the fifth U.S.-India 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in New Delhi.

The Ministers noted the substantial progress in transforming U.S.-India relations across domains, based on trust and mutual understanding.  Building upon the June 2023 and September 2023 visits of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and President Joseph Biden, the Ministers reaffirmed the importance of the U.S.-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership in ensuring international peace and security.

Johns Hopkins Undergrads Named Runners-Up in Collegiate Inventors Competition

The Hub, Oct. 25, 2023

A team of Johns Hopkins University undergraduate biomedical engineering students were named runners-up in the 2023 Collegiate Inventors Competition in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday.

The OnPoint Ventilation team—senior Sneha Batheja, junior Alexandra Gorham, senior Charlie Almoney, senior Ria Jha, junior Nina Nair, senior Arijit Nukala, and junior Krisha Thakur—created the Bronchosleeve, a novel catheter designed to reduce the complications associated with one-lung ventilation, or OLV, a common procedure in chest surgeries.

Extreme Weather Makes a Hard Job Harder for India’s Health Workers

Global Health Now, Oct. 20, 2o23

Between 2012 and 2021, heat waves killed 11,000+ people in India. Despite the extreme heat, managers expected Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) to keep up their visits and finish their work on time—or face dismissal, says longtime activist and ASHA Mandakini Kodak. She alleges that several ASHAs haven’t even been paid, nor were given any protective gear for working in such scorching heat.

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