Professor Parameswaran Ajith from ICTS-TIFR was elected as an Associate Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) for his “outstanding contributions on gravitational lensing of gravitational waves.”
This is a new initiative of INSA to recognise outstanding work by young scientists below the age of 50. INSA selects up to 20 such fellows across all areas of sciences, mathematics, and engineering each year.
The current research of Ajith’s research group, which is a part of the international LIGO Scientific Collaboration, focuses on searching for signatures of gravitational lensing of gravitational waves in the data collected by LIGO-Virgo detectors and using such observations to solve problems in astrophysics and cosmology, for example, to understand the nature of dark matter and to probe cosmic expansion. Ajith’s earlier work includes developing theoretical models of the expected gravitational wave signals that are being used to search for such signals in LIGO-Virgo data and to use such observations to test the predictions of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
ICTS congratulates Ajith and wishes him many more laurels in the coming years.