34th Annual Report (2021-22)

12 Somak Raychaudhury Director, IUCAA quality, but they are making a substantial impact on the subject at the national and international levels. Even more gratifying is the fact that the 197 Visiting Associates of IUCAA, who are faculty members at Indian Universities and Colleges, supported in their research by IUCAA, have published 411 peer-reviewed papers during the same period, with a mean impact factor of 4.32. This number has increased over the years, and clearly indicates the impact IUCAA has had in promoting and nurturing A&A research at institutions of higher education all over the country, and has provided facilities and the right atmosphere for nurturing active collaboration betweenmembers of the community of associates and the national and international communities. The High-Performance computing facilities at IUCAA has now a capacity of 0.5 petaflops, being ranked 10th in India, and its storage has been upgraded by another 1.2 petabytes in the last six months. 42% of the time of this system is now used by non-IUCAA users in Indian Universities by remote login. Among the various academic honours bestowed upon members of the IUCAA faculty, Kanak Saha has been awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award for the Physical Sciences, CSIR, for 2021, S.V. Dhurandhar has been elected Fellow, Indian National Science Academy (INSA) , and Sukanta Bose has been elected Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc). Tarun Souradeep has been appointed Director, Raman Research Institute, Bengaluru, on deputation from IUCAA, and Dipankar Bhattacharya will join Ashoka University as the Sunanda & Santimay Basu Chair Professor in Astrophysics fromApril, on lien. IUCAA has continued to be in the forefront of science popularisation and outreach activities for high school students and the general public. Regular Lecture / Demonstration Programmes for local school students have been conducted, and are very popular. During this year, coming out of pandemic restrictions, we have been able to hold both online and limited in-person events, and in the process have been reaching much larger numbers all over the country. The National Science Day was conducted over two days (27-28 February) online with virtual reality tours of our facilities plus talks and interactive events, with over 65,000participants in the live events, and many more viewing the programmes online since then. Outreach activities included lectures / demonstrations / workshops conducted at different parts of Maharashtra and elsewhere - this included our rural outreach programmes around the LIGO-India site in the Hingoli district, and in the vicinity of IUCAA's own Girawali observatory. All these activities owe a great deal to the hard work by our talented staff (core and contractual) at IUCAA. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to every one of them. The Pune Knowledge Cluster (PKC) was established in 2020, by the Office of The Principal Scientific Advisor, GoI under The City Knowledge and Innovation Cluster Initiative, as one of six city- based initiatives in India. The nodal administrative agency of PKC is IUCAA and its functioning is facilitated by the office of the Director, IUCAA. The PKC aims to bring together Academic Institutions, R&D organizations, Industries, Industry Associations, NGOs, Civic Bodies, Local and State government bodies to collectively work for the betterment of Pune City by optimally utilising science and technology capabilities of its partner organizations. The main projects being worked on are extensive COVID-19 related analysis and modelling, Sustainable mobility and Environmental projects including improving urban tree cover. We deeply mourn the loss of Dr Thanu Padmanabhan (10 March 1957–17 September 2021), Padma Shri and Distinguished Professor, who was a member of the core Faculty of IUCAA, since 1992, and served as Dean of Core Academic Programmes during 1997- 2014. I express our heartfelt condolences to the bereaved family and friends. He will be remembered as a central figure in the history of IUCAA. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to our mentors, our Governing Board with Dr K. Kasturirangan as Chair, and our Council, chaired by Dr M. Jagadesh Kumar, and also the outgoing Chair, the previous Chairman of the UGC, Dr. Dhirendra P. Singh. We sincerely acknowledge the help, advice and support from the University Grants Commission and its officers and staff, and from the Ministry of Education (previously Human Resource Development) of the Government of India.