ICTS Simons Visiting Professor Bala Iyer has been conferred an honorary doctorate by the Central University of Karnataka "in recognition of his meritorious contributions to the field of Science.” Professor Iyer has made pioneering contributions to the calculation of expected gravitational-wave signals from inspiralling binaries of black holes and neutron stars — the kind of signals that was recently detected by LIGO and Virgo.
Professor Iyer is the chairperson of the IndIGO consortium of Indian gravitational-wave physicists, and spearheaded the initial proposal for the LIGO-India observatory. Professor Iyer’s contributions to the gravitational-wave science is widely recognized. He is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society and the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation.