Morse Fellows

Nikhil Padmanabhan received his BS from Stanford in 2001 and his PhD in Physics from Princeton in 2007. Professor Padmanabhan came to Yale in 2009 and is an Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy. His research interests are in cosmology, specifically in understanding the “dark energy” that appears to dominate our universe. He is working with some of the largest astronomical surveys available and thinks about astronomical “big data.” 

Henry Park is an alumnus of Yale College (Morse ‘07, double-majoring in music and MCDB with neurobiology concentration), Yale School of Medicine (‘12), and Yale radiation oncology residency (‘17), with a brief sojourn to Boston from ‘11 to ‘13 for a master’s degree in public health and an internal medicine internship. He works as a radiation oncologist treating lung cancer and head and neck cancer, serving as chief of thoracic radiotherapy. He directs an active clinical research program and enjoys mentoring students, residents, and junior faculty in his role as vice chair for clinical research. He is experienced in medical school and residency selection as a long-time admissions committee member and former associate residency program director. Most importantly, he is a husband and a dad of two young children and a Yorkie.

Lauren Perrino advises students who are interested in studying abroad in France, Asia including the Middle East (except Light Fellowship sites), and North Africa. She also directs the Yale Visiting International Students Program (Y-VISP), which brings undergraduate students from Yale’s partner institutions to study at Yale for a semester or academic year. Lauren received an M.A. in International Education from the George Washington University and a B.A. in French and Education with an Italian minor from Gettysburg College. As an undergraduate, Lauren spent a semester abroad with IES Nantes. After her undergraduate graduation, she spent a year in Nîmes, France, teaching English through TAPIF. 

Chandra Prasad is the author of the young adult novels Mercury Boys, a 2022 Connecticut Book Award finalist,  and Damselfly, a racially diverse, female-driven survival tale published by Scholastic.  Damselfly is used widely in schools as a modern parallel text with the Lord of the Flies.  Her general fiction titles include On Borrowed Wings, another Connecticut Book Award finalist; Death of a Circus, which Booklist calls “richly textured and packed with glamour and grit;” and Breathe the Sky, a fictionalized account of Amelia Earhart’s last days. Prasad is the editor of—and a contributor to—the W.W. Norton anthology Mixed, the first-ever collection of short stories on the multiracial experience. Her shorter works have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Week, Teen Voices, School Library Journal, and in literary, arts, and poetry journals. Prasad is a frequent guest speaker on podcasts and at high schools, universities, and literary conferences. She is also a contributor to New Haven Noir, an anthology edited by Amy Bloom.