Introducing the USINDO 2026 Summer Studies Fellows
Dear USINDO Community,
We are pleased to announce the 2026 USINDO Summer Studies Fellows. This year’s group brings together twelve accomplished students from across the United States, each selected for their academic achievements, leadership, and dedication to fostering stronger connections between the United States and Indonesia.
Since its launch in 1996, the Summer Studies Program, supported by the Freeman Foundation and USINDO, has offered a meaningful cross-cultural learning experience. With a network of nearly 270 alumni nationwide, the program continues to contribute to deeper U.S.–Indonesia engagement across a wide range of fields.
Selected through a highly competitive process, this year’s fellows represent diverse academic interests and perspectives. Over the coming weeks, they will take part in an immersive program in Yogyakarta and Jakarta, engaging with Indonesian language, culture, and society.
Congratulations to the 2026 fellows. Wishing them a rewarding and memorable experience ahead. Follow their journey on our Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and X accounts!
Full Biography of Fellows:
Amy Li is currently a first year PhD student at Rutgers University studying biological anthropology. Her research concerns the changing diets of traditional fishermen in rural communities. In her free time she loves animals, watching anime, and playing video games. During the semester she works in the Coastal Communities Adaptation Lab researching the effects of flooding on residents.
She fell in love with Indonesia during a study abroad program researching orangutans in Central Kalimantan. She was stunned by the natural ecology and the kindness of the locals. When she entered the PhD program she decided that her research would be in Indonesia.
Benjamin Clark is a Ph.D. candidate at North Carolina State University (NCSU) whose research focuses on how water, sanitation, and hygiene influence diarrheal disease burden and antibiotic resistance. His work centers on using microbiology to advance public health. Growing up, he frequently found himself near water—whether it was swimming at the pool, fishing, or catching frogs in stormwater ponds. This inspired him to pursue a B.S. in Water: Resources, Policy & Management at Virginia Tech where he graduated Summa cum laude in May 2019. When the COVID-19 pandemic began in spring 2020, he joined Curative Inc. in Washington, DC, performing PCR testing and training technicians to help scale a highly automated clinical laboratory.
Following his time as a clinical scientist, he moved to Raleigh, North Carolina, to pursue doctoral training at NCSU, where he partnered with the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services to apply wastewater-based epidemiology to COVID-19 monitoring. At NCSU, he collaborated with medical professionals at Duke University to study wastewater signatures of antibiotic resistance and pathogens in Raleigh. He also evaluated surface water quality with the Coharie River Initiative to support safe recreation. As a Global One Health Fellow, he led two large, multi-institutional studies, coordinating at least sixteen collaborators across four universities to investigate antibiotic resistance sources in Indonesia and children’s health outcomes in Malawi. He aspires to promote equitable and effective public health policy through translational science. Beyond the workplace, he enjoys playing soccer, hiking, fishing, and cooking with friends.
Bethzy Mejia is a Government major at Wesleyan University, pursuing minors in the College of East Asian Studies and Global Engagement. She is especially interested in migration policy, international diplomacy, and how global communities navigate displacement and development.
On campus, Bethzy is involved in both leadership and advocacy work. She serves on the Global Engagement Minor Student Advisory Committee, where she helps shape the program’s growth and student experience. She is also the Marketing Manager for Wesleyan’s Student of Color Pre-Law Association, where she promotes events and supports initiatives focused on expanding access to mentorship and legal resources for underrepresented students.
Her professional experiences have strengthened her commitment to public service. As a Judicial Intern at the Superior Court of Los Angeles County, she observed a range of court proceedings and gained insight into how the legal system operates in practice. She has also conducted oral history research as an intern at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, where she documented and analyzed community narratives.
Outside of academics, Bethzy volunteers with refugee and immigrant communities, providing tutoring and helping connect individuals with local resources. She also has a strong personal interest in dance, which has shaped how she connects with culture and community.
Her interest in Indonesia comes from both her academic focus and her passion for cultural expression. She is especially excited to learn more about Indonesian culture and the arts, particularly traditional and contemporary dance, as a way to better understand the country’s history, identity, and diverse communities.
Clio Barrett is a born-and-raised New Yorker currently attending Smith College where she studies creative writing and political theory. She has engaged her campus in many ways as a student photographer, a House Community Advisor for Residence Life, and a Pedagogical Partner for the centers of Teaching, Learning, and Collaborative Leadership. She has been a contributor to arts and literary magazines like Crush and Citrus and the Smoovez Hip-Hop collective. She is currently studying Portuguese and social justice in São Paulo, Brazil. With connection to the Indonesian diaspora, Clio is grateful to be spending her summer studying Bahasa Indonesia, engaging with the performing arts and culture of Yogyakarta, and continuing her exploration of the effects and morals of tourism.
Jovian Pham is a student at Macalester College majoring in Statistics. He is interested in statistical analysis and plans to continue his studies in graduate school. He enjoys cross-cultural collaboration and looks forward to this opportunity to learn more about Indonesian language and culture. Jovian's passions include art, music, and many other mediums for personal and cultural expression.
Ilya Lev Brunner is interested in the history of extraction, specifically as it relates to the relationship between Overseas Chinese, environment, and empire in Maritime Southeast Asia. They are a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Utah, and they have worked as a research historian, a fence-builder, and a translator, among other things; right now they are in the employ of the University of Utah’s powder metallurgy research lab. Mines, mining, and metal are some of their favorite things, along with finding rock art, knitting, writing, riding bikes, reading nonfiction, and walking very long distances.
Italia Ortega is a first-generation college student currently majoring in Philosophy at California State University, Northridge (CSUN). She is a member of the GE Honors Program and driven by her curiosity of the intersection of government and society. Italia plans to pursue her curiosity through her Philosophy of Religion courses and electives at her university. Italia has long been committed to local engagement through the Los Angeles Police Department’s Community Outreach Program, where she has assisted with departmental communication and attended community meetings over several years.
Italia’s specialized interest in Indonesia stems from the country's unique religious diversity and the many ways religion influences its politics and international relations. To explore this passion, she participated in the U.S. Department of State’s Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) Program in 2024, completing an intensive language immersion in Malang. Fluent in English and Spanish and conversational in Indonesian, Italia hopes to pursue a career with a dedicated focus on global cultural and religious scholarship.
Megan Guerrero is currently a first-year political science student at Los Angeles Mission College, and serves as the president of the college's Associated Students Organization. In the past, she was a member of the Los Angeles City Youth Council, representing youth in policy recommendations on projects like the LA28 Olympics. Megan became interested in Indonesia after attending a Model United Nations conference focusing on Indonesia transition into democracy in 1998, and is at large interested in Southeast Asian history and culture. She hopes to share positives from Indonesia's urban policy in her future work.
Mia Tschan is currently a second-year student in the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Honors College. Mia is majoring in political science with minors in Brookings public policy and global entrepreneurship. She is active in several campus organizations, including as the Chief Copy Editor at the Scarlet & Gray, a student researcher with Brookings Mountain West and the Lincy Institute, and a member of the Dean's Student Advisory Council. She is also working as an intern for the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada and volunteers as an assistant speech and debate coach for her former high school. Mia is interested in exploring Indonesia specifically because of her grandfather's connection to the region. She is excited to learn more about the culture and learn the language to forge relationships with people across the archipelago.
Naomi Frim-Abrams graduated this May with an M.S. in Global Health from Boston University. At Boston University, she worked as the Events Specialist for the Pardee School of Global Studies as well as the Project Coordinator for the Global Development Policy Center’s Human Capital Initiative. She is interested in human-environmental health interactions, and has studied topics including global health, urban policy, environmental politics, and climate change. She has spent considerable time in Java, Indonesia and Sunderland, UK, and her other interests include international policy and development as well as population- and individual-level approaches to global health.
Naomi first visited Yogyakarta in 2018 for 9 months as part of Princeton University's Novogratz Bridge Year Program. In Jogja, she lived with a host family, took language classes, and interned at SAPDA Jogja, a disability/women's rights NGO. She returned to Indonesia in 2023 as a Research Fellow for the University of Jember’s Centre for Human Rights, Multiculturalism, and Migration, where she reviewed, edited, and contributed to content for the Journal of Southeast Asian Human Rights. She is very excited to be participating in the USINDO Summer Studies program, where she hopes to continue improving her language skills to have a greater impact in the field of global health and development, and contribute to pressing issues facing Indonesia today.
She received her BA in Sociology from Princeton University in 2023 with minors in Global Health and Health Policy, Environmental Studies, and Urban Studies.
River Jordan Pugh is a second-year student at American University in Washington, DC. During his previous career, he worked as a 911 dispatcher and used his time in public service to understand the needs of the people in their most vulnerable moments. His majors are Biochemistry and Philosophy, and his minors are Linguistics and Japanese. He is also currently in school for pre-medicine, meaning his scholarly journey will end in becoming a doctor. While this is a vast array of interests, they actually do align perfectly with his academic focus. His focus involves studying linguistic patterns to analyze the determinants of health in large-scale systems with many points of diversity. Specifically, the marvel of a medical system in a culture like Indonesia, which has over seven hundred official languages and thirteen thousand different ethnicities, is fascinating to RJ Pugh as a linguist and scholar who is studying to be a doctor. As a biochemist, he is also highly interested in genetic ethics and sovereignty and has a goal of providing better genetically-based healthcare and access to the populations that have historically been underrepresented in the data. Some of his other goals include being a bridge for the sciences between Indonesia and other nations for diplomatic relationships in the fields of study, so that other biochemists and biologists can study the many islands in Indonesia ethically on Indonesia’s own terms. Philosophically, as a future physician, he is also interested in Indonesian medical epistemologies such as Jamu.
Verabelle Pakasi is an undergraduate student at New York University, pursuing a B.S. in Leadership and Management with a focus on finance and technology. Her academic work centers on financial analysis, project management, and global business, with an interest in how structured decision-making can improve organizational performance.
Verabelle is actively involved in several communities at New York University. As a member of the Transfer Advisory Board, she works with administrators to improve the transition experience for incoming students, contributing to more structured programming and stronger engagement. She is also involved in Christians on Campus, where she participates in small-group discussions that focus on building community, and with the Center for Accessibility and Inclusive Culture, where she supports efforts to make campus environments more accessible.
She gained experience as an Operations Intern at an early-stage fintech startup focused on improving financial access for small businesses. In this role, she built systems in Excel, identified inefficiencies, and supported day-to-day operations.
As an Indonesian American, Verabelle’s interest in Indonesia has been shaped by her family and cultural background. Having visited Indonesia, she was struck by the strong sense of community, cultural traditions, and differences in economic opportunity. She is particularly interested in learning more about the language, culture, and social issues in the country.
Through this program, Verabelle aims to strengthen her Indonesian language skills and deepen her cultural understanding. She hopes to use these skills to teach others Indonesian and support individuals facing language barriers, creating more accessible and inclusive environments.