Sudip Bhattacharyya
| Grant Category: | Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award (Research) |
| Project Title: | Probing Fundamental Aspects of Neutron Stars using Millisecond Pulsars |
| Field of Study: | Physics |
| Home Institution: | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Maharashtra |
| Host Institution: | Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge |
| Grant Start Month: | April 2025 |
| Duration of Grant: | Nine months |
Brief Bio:
Prof. Sudip Bhattacharyya is a professor in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, Maharashtra. He is also the current Payload Manager of the Soft X-ray Telescope aboard AstroSat, the first dedicated Indian astronomy satellite. He primarily works on extremely compact cosmic objects, such as neutron stars and black holes. These objects provide excellent opportunities to probe extreme aspects of physics, such as strong gravity, high magnetic field, accretion-ejection mechanism, high-density degenerate matter, and gravitational waves, which cannot be studied in terrestrial laboratories. Prof. Bhattacharyya studies these objects primarily using X-ray satellite data and theoretical modelling. Prof. Bhattacharyya did his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the Indian Institute of Science and the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, and was a Research Associate at the University of Maryland at College Park and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the USA, before joining a faculty position at TIFR in 2007. He received the NASA Space Science Achievement Award in 2007.
Prof. Bhattacharyya’s Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence project aims to study the evolution of rapidly spinning neutron stars to probe their fundamental aspects. The project can be relevant for several Indian and U.S. observatories.