Hearty congratulations to Dr. Nayak and Ms. Samajdar.
It is a pleasure to share with you that the 2016 Gruber Foundation Cosmology Prize recognizes Ronald Drever, Kip Thorne, Rainer Weiss, and the entire Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) discovery team for the first observation of gravitational waves. As you are aware, Dr. Rajesh Kumble Nayak and Ms. Anuradha Samajdar are part of the LIGO team from IISER Kolkata. For more details, please see the following link: http://gruber.yale.edu/cosmology/press/2016-gruber-cosmology-prize-press-release
Detection of Gravitational Waves
CESSI and Physics personnel have been part of a global team that has finally detected astrophysical gravitational waves 100 years after their existence was predicted by Albert Einstein. Gravitational astrophysics (and the hunt for gravitational waves) is one of the research aims of CESSI and this detection opens up a new window for probing exotic objects and extreme phenomena in the Universe.
We proudly note the involvement of Dr. Rajesh Nayak and his PhD student Ms. Anuradha Samajdar in this global effort and congratulate them and the international LIGO team for this outstanding breakthrough
For further details on local contribution: click here
For information on the detection of gravitational waves and the international LIGO collaboration: http://www.ligo.org/
For information on gravitational waves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_wave
For information on the LIGO-India initiative:
http://www.gw-indigo.org/
PHD Comics with their gig on Gravitational Waves: https://youtu.be/4GbWfNHtHRg
The research paper on gravitational wave detection: http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.116.061102
The Aditya-L1 space observatory
The Aditya-L1 space observatory, India's first mission to study the Sun received official sanction of the Government of India recently. CESSI personnel (as PIs and Co-Is) are directly contributing to mission development through instrumentation and theoretical modelling support.
More information on Aditya is available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aditya_(satellite)
Science for Space Weather Conference
CESSI was the primary Indian organizer for the Science for Space Weather Workshop which was held in Goa, India from 24-29th January, 2016. A total of 104 scientists and students from 21 countries participated in this workshop which was co-sponsored by CESSI-IISER Kolkata, University of Kiel, Physical Research Laboratory, Committee on Space Research, Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics, NASA International Living with a Star Program and ISRO. During this workshop a special school on space weather was organized by NASA/NSFs Community Coordinated Modelling Center (CCMC) and CESSI for students. In the school 22 PhD/MS students from India and 3 students from abroad participated. The workshop and school were very successful; highlights of which were unveiling of plans for India's first solar space mission, and the emergence of a consensus document calling for international cooperation in sharing of resources amongst space agencies to support space weather data analysis and research.
More information on the workshop and school are available at: http://www.cessi.in/ssw/
Mr. Rakesh Mazumder, PhD student of CESSI, was selected for the prestigious Sokendai Asian Solar Physics Winter School and attended the same in Japan from 26-28th January 2016. His trip to Japan to attend this school was completely sponsored by the organizers.
Dr. Aveek Sarkar, who worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate and subsequently Research Scientist at CESSI for two and half years, was offered a faculty position at the Physical Research Laboratory (PRL, Ahmedabad), the premier research institute of the Department of Space. He joined PRL as a Reader on 15th December, 2015. We wish him all the best in his future endeavours.