Ahmedabad University Students Take Local Ideas Towards Impact through the Millennium Fellowship

A birdwatcher for seven years, Madhav Murthy, BS (Hons) Class of 2028, began studying the city’s birdlife while he was in Xth grade. During the monsoon and winter seasons, he surveyed more than 60 locations across Ahmedabad to understand the distribution of bird and tree species across different urban settings. He later published a book based on his observations, hoping to encourage more young people to take an interest in the natural world around them.

At Ahmedabad University, this interest has grown into research. Madhav has studied the flocking behaviour of birds on campus, with his work recently being published. Now, he is taking this work further as a Millennium Fellow.

Madhav has been selected for the Millennium Fellowship, a semester-long leadership development programme presented by the United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI) and the Millennium Campus Network (MCN). The Fellowship brings together student leaders who learn from one another, exchange ideas, and work on projects that address challenges in their communities.

For Madhav, the Fellowship is an opportunity to expand his urban ecology study. “Through this Fellowship, I plan to expand this project, collect more accurate data, involve more people, and try to understand the city better. I also look forward to collaborating with people from the UN and learning from them — especially about leadership, managing a project, and maximising its impact,” said Madhav.

For Samasrita Chanduri, BS (Hons) Class of 2028, it began with a simple observation about the green spaces around her. Maintaining lawns requires considerable water and other resources. Regular mowing also removes leaf litter and twigs that would otherwise return nutrients to the soil and provide habitat for insects and other small organisms.

Her response is Urban Fallows, an initiative that explores what happens when parts of an urban landscape are allowed to grow naturally. The Fellowship gives her an opportunity to take this idea further — by turning an observation into a structured study and building evidence that could eventually inform the management of urban green spaces.

“What drew me to the Fellowship was its focus on local work. I want to develop this project into a scientific study, understand what can be measured, and build evidence that can contribute to policy change around lawns in urban settings,” said Samasrita.

Madhav and Samasrita are among eleven Ahmedabad University students selected as Millennium Fellows. The cohort also includes Aryananda K, Bhavya Modi, Dron Kanabar, Eti Patel, Fenil Shah, Insiyah Kapasi, Madhav Rathi, and Manoj Kumar. Each brings a different question and concern to the Fellowship. Their work spans food systems and livelihoods, menstrual health and period literacy, education and learning, mental health and wellbeing, cognitive science, urban sustainability, and mentorship and support for first-generation learners.

For the students, the Millennium Fellowship provides an opportunity to develop these ideas through collaboration, evidence, and leadership. For the University, it reflects an approach to learning that encourages students to engage with the world around them and take their questions beyond the classroom.