Dr Smruti S Pattanaik is a Research Fellow (SS) at the MP-IDSA. Her area of specialization is South Asia. Her current research project is titled as “India’s Response to China’s Presence in South Asia: Challenges and Policy Options”.Dr Pattanaik has been a recipient of many international fellowships. She was a Visiting Asia Fellow (Asian Scholarship Foundation, Bangkok) at the Department of International Relations, Dhaka University in 2004 and a follow-up grantee in 2007, researching on politics of identity in Bangladesh. She was a recipient of the Kodikara Award in 1999 (RCSS, Colombo), a Post-doctoral Fellow at FMSH (Fondation Maison des Science de l’Homme), and was attached to the Centre for International Relations and Research (CERI, Science Po), Paris. She was selected to attend the Symposium on the East Asian Security (SEAS) Program conducted by the US State Department and USPACOM in 2011. She was a Visiting Fellow (September-October 2011) at the International Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and she was a Visiting Professor on ICCR’s India Chair at the University of Colombo for a semester.