Four graduate students and one alumna from The Ohio State University received Fulbright U.S. Student Program fellowships for 2026-2027 to conduct research abroad in diverse fields including entomology in Chile, anthropology in Poland, ethnographic family studies in Canada, genetic dermatology in South Africa, and cervical cancer screening in Brazil, with projects aimed at advancing scientific understanding and community health.
Graduate students Lucy Guarnieri, College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences, Lauren Hayden, College of Arts and Sciences, Esema Idemudia and Nishant Pradhan, College of Medicine and alumna Shanbrae McFarland all earned the prestigious fellowship.
A doctoral student in the Department of Entomology, Lucy Guarnieri has been awarded the Fulbright Research Chile Science Initiative Award to research “Can flowers improve the survival of Mastrus ridens – a wasp that feeds on a serious fruit pest?” Guarnieri will be working with Tania Zaviezo at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago, Chile. The goal of the Fulbright project is to improve biological control of the codling moth, which is a very damaging invasive species that attacks apple crops, affecting apple production in Chile and in many countries globally. Her advisor is Mary Gardiner.
A doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology, Lauren Hayden has been awarded a Fulbright Research award to Poland to investigate how political and religious transformations shape health. Working with skeletal remains from the early medieval site of Giecz, Hayden will examine physiological stress markers in the vertebral column, teeth and long bones to understand how the formation of the Polish state and the transition to Christianity affected population health.
Through this biocultural approach, Hayden's research connects social change to embodied health, asking how access to resources and shifting power systems influenced growth, stress, and survival. This project aims to reconstruct and understand the lived experiences and health of ordinary people, whose voices are largely absent from historical records. Amanda Agnew is her advisor.
Shanbrae McFarland ’24 MA has been awarded a Fulbright Research Award for Canada to research “A Case for (Inter) National Action?: An Ethnographic Study of the Urban Family in Ontario.” Her project examines the daily lives, values and resilience of low-income urban families in Ontario, Canada, and how those factors influence educational access and economic opportunities.
McFarland plans to work alongside Ontario communities to develop effective, people-centered policy solutions that improve urban families' financial and educational futures with support programs designed and led by local residents. While earning her master’s degree in comparative studies, McFarland was advised by Spencer Drew and mentored by Theresa Hice-Fromille and Akil Houston.
A medical student, Esema Idemudia, was awarded a Fulbright Program Open Study/Research Award to South Africa to study "At the Root: Genomic and Histological Study of Lichen Planopilaris (LPP) in South Africa." She will work with Professor Ncoza Dlova at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and researchers at the KwaZulu-Natal Research Innovation and Sequencing Platform (KRISP) to conduct the first genetic and biopsy-based study of LPP in sub-Saharan Africa. Her research will investigate genetic variants associated with scarring alopecia and examine how these findings correlate with disease severity, histological changes, and barriers to diagnosis and treatment.
This work builds on Dlova's landmark research in scarring alopecia genetics and aims to create the first genetic profile of LPP in African patients.
A medical student, Nishant Pradhan was awarded a Fulbright Research award to Brazil to study the expansion of a cervical cancer screening program across the state of São Paulo. His research specifically involves identifying and addressing regional needs and barriers to cervical cancer screening by engaging community health workers (CHWs), who are embedded throughout Brazil’s public health system as key players in the country’s public health strategy. He will be working with the Fundação Oncocentro de São Paulo, the state cancer prevention organization, under the guidance of its director, Dr. Victor Wünsch Filho, while also conducting fieldwork with CHW teams around the state. This project draws from his research interests in gynecology, community health, and ethnographic methods in medicine.
Fulbright
Administered by the U.S. Department of State, the mission of the Fulbright Program is for both the awardee and the host community to grow through international exchange. These Fulbright fellowships offer U.S. graduating college seniors, graduate students, young professionals and artists an opportunity to study, conduct research, and/or teach English abroad.
The Fulbright U.S. Student Program competition for graduate students is administered through the Office of International Affairs. Interested graduate students should contact Louise Edwards. The competition for undergraduates is administered at Ohio State through the Undergraduate Fellowship Office.