Another Rice alum awarded Fulbright Scholarship

Mangat to study in India

Rice alum Jasdeep Mangat ’09 has received a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research abroad in the coming year. He is the fifth current or former Rice student to receive this honor for 2012.

Fulbright scholars are chosen for both their academic merit and their ambassadorial potential. The Fulbright Scholarship program is sponsored by the U.S. State Department and allows seniors, recent graduates and graduate students to study, teach and conduct research in a foreign country.

Jasdeep Mangat

Mangat, who is currently finishing his third year of medical school at Baylor College of Medicine, is taking a year off to study medical anthropology in India with his Fulbright grant. He is interested in the experiences and treatment of people with mental illness at the All India Pingalwara Charitable Society, a home for the destitute in Amritsar, Punjab. He plans to examine different variables, from socio-cultural influences to health care access to linguistics, and how each one affects the way individuals experience specific mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia and depression.

Mangat, from San Antonio has a B.S. in biochemistry and cell biology from Rice. His parents emigrated from Punjab, and he said the Fulbright Scholarship will allow him to immerse himself in the culture and live in the state his family once called home.

The other four Fulbright recipients from Rice, who were announced last month, are graduate student Amanda Moehnke and alumni Francesca Schley ’12, Tracey Lam ‘11 and Payton Odom ‘09.