Who are we
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Ravinder Banyal is a research scientist at Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore.
His research areas includes photonics, astronomy instrumentation and exoplanet science. He is also interested in science outreach and public understanding of science. Ritaban Chatterjee is an assistant professor at the Department of Physics, Presidency University Kolkata. His research interest is centered on the inflow and outflow around super-massive black holes. He strives to be aware of various conscious and unconscious bias against the under-represented in academia and aspires to advance this awareness among the communities he belongs to. Being a multi-wavelength astronomer and a teacher in the university, Ritaban constantly tries to tune his "wavelength" in order to communicate better with the students. He hopes the new generation to grow up with more awareness and empathy for all sorts of "otherness" in their communities.
Harvinder Kaur Jassal is a faculty member in IISER Mohali. Her research interest is to study theoretical and observational aspects of dark energy. She has been a warden in her Institute and has been closely involved in working on issues related to female students and related to support/house keeping staff in hostels. She helped in organising the first formal gender session in ASI meeting in 2014.
Nissim Kanekar is an astronomer at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics, Pune. His research interests are in galaxy formation and evolution, the interstellar medium in galaxies, and using astronomical phenomena to test fundamental physics. Kshitija Kelkar is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore. Her main area of research includes understanding how galaxies evolve in their environments. She is also active in science popularisation and making astronomy accessible to general public.
Chairperson (2018 - current) Preeti Kharb is an astrophysicist at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune. Her science interests revolve around outflows from "active" galaxies. She also firmly believes that the best research takes place in a gender equitable environment. She has been a member of the WGGE since its inception and is its current Chair.
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Prajval Shastri is an astrophysicist, who was a faculty at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, for 23 years. Her core research interest is empirical investigations of giant black holes in the centres of distant galaxies. She believes that nurturing learning environments pave the way towards excellence. Acutely aware of her privilege of being paid to be fascinated by the universe, she is continually amazed that the amateur astronomers often stand out as the impassioned ones. She has been engaging publicly and in academic settings with the issue of gender inequity in the astrophysics profession since 2007. |