IIA ALUMNI
TESTIMONIALS

I was one of the first PhD students taken via the IIA nationwide exam in 1990. Completed my doctoral degree in 1996 with Prof. Parthasarathy as my mentor on studies of evolved stars - Post-AGB stars. Later I had two stints of PDFs, one at Valparaiso University, USA ( 2 years) and another at the University of Texas, Austin (4 years). It is in Austin where I could expand my interest to Galactic Chemical evolution, Li in red giants and Stars with planets. In 2003, moved back to IIA, since then, I have been here. I have always enjoyed doing research at IIA. The egalitarian environment at IIA is conducive to opportunities to grow as an individual and find ways for success in one's career. For more about me, you may look at "https://www.iiap.res.in/?q=ereddy" or send a message via email: bachamr@gmail.com.

I got my Ph.D. degree in April 2000. A post-doctoral fellow at University de Montpellier-II between 2001-2002 and the Observatory di Trieste, Italy, from 2002 to 2003. I returned to India for about a year with my newborn twins. I spent 2003-2004 at IUCAA, Pune as a visiting associate. Between 2003-2004, I was a research associate at Michigan State University and 2008-2009 at the University of Florida. I joined IIA as a reader in 2009. My main research interests are Galactic archeology, instrumentation, and exoplanet studies. For more details, Please contact sivarani@iiap.res.in

I, R. Sridharan, completed my PhD at IIA in 2001. Broadly speaking, my research interests include high resolution imaging and spectroscopy. My current research interests are (a) adaptive & multi-conjugate adaptive optics (Solar and stellar) (b) Interferometry (Speckle Imaging, aperture masking, long-baseline interferometry) I am currently employed at IIA as a faculty(Scientist E; Indian Institute of Astrophysics, II Block Koramangala, Bengaluru 560034) Contact details: sridharan.r@iiap.res.in, sridharan71@gmail.com, Phone: +91 080 2254 1335 Mob: +91 8860501810

My PhD thesis was on 'Spectropolarimetry of active regions on the Sun' carried out under the guidance of Prof. K. E. Rangarajan. Post PhD I was a postdoc at IIA for a brief period before moving to Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Germany. I spent slightly more than 5 years at MPS and then joined IIA as Reader in 2015. My main research goal is to infer magnetic field simultaneously at multiple heights in the solar atmosphere. Multi-line spectropolarimetric observations is the main observational technique adapted for this purpose. Magnetic field dynamics at subarcsecond spatial resolution to global scale are being explored. I have worked on instrumentation, observations, and modeling of spectropolarimetric data and continuing work to achieve the above-stated goal. For more details, Please contact nagarajuk@iiap.res.in

I did PhD in IIA during the period 2005-2010 under the supervision of Dr. Annapurni Subramaniam, on the topic `Emission line stars in young open clusters'. After that, I held postdoctoral positions at PRL, Swinburne, and TIFR. Presently, I am an Assistant professor at Christ University, Bangalore. I am an observational astronomer working on aspects related to star formation, emission-line stars, Young Stellar Objects, and X-ray binaries. We have a research team comprising of PhD students, postdocs, and UG/PG students working on projects related to Galactic and Extragalactic Astronomy. For more details, please contact blesson.mathew@christuniversity.in

I am an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) having worked under the supervision of Prof. B. Raghavendra Prasad at IIA and obtained my Ph.D. degree in 2012 from IISc under the Joint Astronomy Program. After my Ph.D. work, I worked as a postdoc (March 2012 – February 2018) in the research labs of Prof. Brian Vohnsen (University College Dublin, Ireland) and Prof. Susana Marcos (Instituto de Optica, Spain), and made research contributions in the field of wavefront sensing, adaptive optics, and vision science. Later, as a Senior Research Scientist at Stanford University (March 2018 – July 2022), with mentor, Prof. Alfredo Dubra, we worked towards the improvement of adaptive optics ophthalmic imaging systems. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Physical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Berhampur, India. My research interests are wavefront sensing, adaptive optics, ophthalmic imaging, and vision science. I can be reached at vakondi@iiserbpr.ac.in

I did my Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Bangalore from 2007 to 2013. My Ph.D. supervisor was Prof. K. N. Nagendra. My Ph.D. thesis was "Advanced Numerical Methods for Polarized Line Formation Theory". After my Ph.D. I received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship to carry out postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Goettingen Germany. I continued my research at MPS until January 2022. I worked on various research projects that includes developing radiative transfer codes to study stellar atmospheres and developing codes to analyze small-scale magnetic features on the Sun. I joined IIA as an assistant professor in February 2022. For more details, please contact anusha.ls@iiap.res.in

I completed my PhD from IIA in 2016 and I am currently working as a Post Doctoral Fellow at TIFR, Mumbai. I work on optical designs of astronomical spectrographs, detector readout designs, and development of the data reduction and software analysis tools. I was also a TMT/IRIS postdoctoral scholar at UCSD during 2018 - 2020. For more details, please contact arunsuryaoffice@gmail.com

I carried out my Doctoral thesis work at IIA under the supervision of Prof. Annapurni Subramaniam and received my Ph.D. degree from IISc (Bangalore) in 2016 under the Joint Astronomy Program. As of June 2022, I am employed at the Space Telescope Science Institute, USA, as an 'Evolved Star Postdoctoral Fellow'. Prior to this, I served as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Macquarie University (Australia) and 'Lee Wonchul Postdoctoral Fellow' at Yonsei University Observatory (South Korea). I seek answers to some major questions pertinent to galaxy evolution and star formation in our Universe. I use multi-wavelength data for my studies - from targeted observations and Big Sky surveys, acquired using prominent space-based and ground-based telescopes. I lead science projects in collaboration with an international consortium based in Europe and other prolific research groups based in the USA, Australia, India, and South Korea. For details, please write to me at samyaday.choudhury@gmail.com

I did my Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Astronomical Instrumentation in April 2018. My thesis title was “Development of Instruments for Astronomical Site Characterization and their Application". From July 2017 to September 2018, I was employed as a Project Engineer at India - Thirty Meter Telescope Coordination Center at IIA, Bangalore. From October 2018 to July 2020, I worked as a Post-Doctoral fellow at the 1st Physics Institute of the University of Cologne, Germany on the NAIR (NOVEL ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTATION THROUGH PHOTONIC REFORMATTING) Project. From August 2020 onwards, I am working as a Post-Doctoral fellow at the 1st Physics Institute of the University of Cologne, Germany. My role is of the Optics and AIV Engineer for the WCU (Warm Calibration Unit) of the METIS instrument for the Extremely Large Telescope. For more details, please contact tarun6025@gmail.com.

I have completed my Ph.D. from the IIA in 2017. Afterward, I have spent two and half years at Peking University, China, and one year jointly at George Mason University and Applied Physics Laboratory Johns Hopkins University, USA as a postdoctoral researcher. In December 2020, I was awarded the prestigious NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. Upon completing one year of my NPP fellowship, I left NASA to join the faculty position at IIA. For more details, please contact tanmoy.samanta@iiap.res.in

I did my Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) Bangalore under the Joint Astronomy Program organized by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru. For my Ph.D., I worked with Prof. T. Sivarani and the title of my thesis was "Study of stellar relics from the early Galaxy". I submitted the thesis in 2017 and the degree got awarded. After getting the Ph.D. degree, I joined TTIFR Mumbai for my first postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. D.K. Ojha. Currently, I am a post-doctoral fellow at IIA with Prof. B.Eswar Reddy and this is my second postdoctoral position. For more details, please contact susmitha.antony@iiap.res.in

I completed my Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Arun Mangalam with the thesis entitled "Twisted magnetic fluxtubes in solar atmosphere". Currently, I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Mathematical Plasma-Astrophysics (CmPA) in KU Leuven, Belgium. My primary focus of research is in the domain of Solar astrophysics. Currently, I am working on the mathematical modeling and numerical simulation of the magnetohydrodynamic behavior in the solar atmosphere. For more details please contact me at samratseniitmadras@gmail.com or follow my website https://samratseniitmadras.wixsite.com/websam

I finished my integrated M.Tech-Ph.D. in February 2020. I worked on the development of multilayer X-ray optics with Prof. P. Sreekumar and Dr. Shyama Narendranath. After defending my thesis, I briefly worked at NTNU, Norway as a postdoc until the end of 2020. I am currently working at NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center as an NPP fellow from January 2021. My broad area of research is the development of X-ray optics and Solar X-ray astronomy. Please contact me at singam.panini@gmail.com

I received my Ph.D. in Astronomical Instrumentation from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) & University of Calcutta in January 2021. My PhD Thesis topic was 'Modeling, Simulation, And Implementation Of Primary Mirror Control System For The Prototype Segmented Mirror Telescope'. Between Dec 2017 to May 2020, I was working as a Project Engineer at India - Thirty Meter Telescope Coordination Center at IIA, Bangalore, and from June 2020, I am working as an Engineer - C at IIA Bangalore.

I completed my Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore in January 2021. For my Ph.D. thesis, I worked with Prof. Arun Mangalam on the General Relativistic dynamics of the black hole systems and implication to observations. Currently, I am a post-doctoral fellow at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. I am working with the Indian Pulsar Timing Array collaboration (InPTA; website - https://inpta.iitr.ac.in/) which is conducting a pulsar timing experiment in the search for low-frequency nanoHz Gravitational Waves. At InPTA, we make use of the upgraded Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope (uGMRT) for monitoring a sample of galactic millisecond pulsars for this purpose. I have contributed to the first data release of InPTA, and I am currently working on the interstellar medium studies, particularly on the investigation of radio-frequency dependence of dispersion measure (DM) of InPTA pulsars. I am also working on the search for nanoHz Gravitational Waves from the hyperbolic interactions of supermassive black binary systems. I am interested in various General Relativistic studies of particle and photon orbits in the Kerr spacetime. For more details, please check https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6184-5195