Director

Tarun Souradeep

Prof. Tarun Souradeep

Professor Tarun Souradeep assumed charge as Director, Raman Research Institute on 20th January 2022. Before coming to RRI, he was a professor and the Chair of the Physics Department at IISER, Pune. Prof. Souradeep’s area of expertise is Cosmology and Gravitational Wave Physics and Astronomy, areas in which he has made important contributions and succeeded in creating a strong, sustained Indian effort addressing issues at par with international research. The impact of the Indian team led by him is widely recognized, both in the field of cosmology with frontline Cosmic Microwave Background experiments (CMB), and the emergent field of gravitational wave (GW) astronomy.

He is the spokesperson (Science) for LIGO-India and Member Secretary of LIGO - India Scientific Management Board. Together with Prof Bala Iyer (then at RRI), he was one of lead proposers of the national mega-science LIGO-India project way back in 2011. He is a recipient of various awards including DST Swarnajayanti Fellowship, Gruber Cosmology Prize 2016 and 2018 and the Special breakthrough Prize for 2016. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and the Indian Academy of Sciences. His election to the fellowship of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation is a testament to his standing among his international peers.

Research Focus

  • Cosmology
    • Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB).
    • Large-Scale Structure in the Universe.
    • Primordial cosmological perturbations from Inflation.
    • Early Universe and applications of QFT in curved spacetime.
  • Gravitational wave (GW) Physics & Astronomy
    • Lead roles in Indian observational programs in GW observations: direct (LIGO-India) and through CMB polarisation (CMB-Bharat)
    • Stochastic GW background
    • Simulation and modelling aspects of GW detectors (entering the field).

Awards and Fellowships

  • Fellow of International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, 2013.
  • Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore 2013.
  • Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India 2018
  • Gruber Cosmology Prize 2018 (with Planck core team), Gruber Foundation.
  • Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics 2016 : International award co-shared with authors of the Gravitational wave discovery paper.
  • Princess of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research 2017 (shared with LIGO Scientific Collaboration), Fundacion Principe de Asturias, Spain.
  • Gruber Cosmology Prize 2016 (shared with LIGO Scientific Collaboration), Gruber Foundation.
  • Hari Om prerit Vikram Sarabhai Research Award for Space science (PRL, Ahmedabad, Aug 2012).
  • B. M. Birla Science prize in Physics–2006 (awarded Dec 31, 2007).
  • DST Swarnajayanti fellowship award 2005-06 (DST, India).

Other Professional Recognition, roles & Affiliations

  1. Spokesperson, LIGO-India (Science).
  2. Member Secretary, LIGO-India Scientific Management Board
  3. PI, LIGO-India-Training, R&D .
  4. Council Member of the LIGO Scientific collaboration.
  5. Spokesperson, IndIGO (Indian Initiative in Gravitational Wave Observations) consortium.
  6. Chair, SOC of Amaldi-14: Melbourne, Australia July 2021.
  7. Member, SOC of 30th Texas Symposium On Relativistic Astrophysics, Portsmouth, UK, Dec 2019.
  8. Member, National Advisory Committee for Space Science & Instrumenta- tion, department, IIT Kanpur
  9. Member of the Editorial Board, Current Science (Indian Academy of Sciences).
  10. Member, National Committee for the IAU
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