35th Annual Report (2022-2023) - ENGLISH

DIRECTOR'S REPORT 15 The main objectives of IUCAA are to provide a centre of excellence within the university-sector for teaching, research and development in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), as well as to promote nucleation and growth of active groups in this area in the universities. The aim is to provide workers from university departments access to state-of-the art astronomical instrumentation, theoretical know-how well equipped laboratories, data centre and high-quality computing facilities. For more than three decades IUCAA has not only achieved these objectives, but has maintained the emphasis on fundamental research and innovative teaching in a wide range of areas of A&A. Over this period IUCAA's interactions with University has also evolved as per the demands of the changing research and technology landscape in the country and abroad. Indian Astronomy is expect to go through a major evolution in the coming decade through (i) our participation in Mega- Science projects such as TMT, SKA and LIGO-India, (ii) ever improving space programs (ADITYA-L1, Daksha, INSIST etc) and (iii) rapidly growing computational resources (e.g NSM). Successful outcomes from all these developments will depend on how well we can develop the required human resources in the available time. Needless to say the trained human resources have to come from universities and here lies the major responsibility of inter-university centres like IUCAA. In consultation with all the stake holders we need to urgently develop short and long term strategic plans for IUCAA to move in this direction. At present IUCAA's academic staff consists of 27 faculty members (including Emeritus Professors), 4 Adjunct faculty members, 53 PhD students, 25 Post-Doctoral fellows, 41 Scientific and technical staffs and 5 project students. High level of science productivity of IUCAA academic staff is reflected in the fact that during this academic year they have published about 193 papers in the peer reviewed journals. The average impact factor for these publications is 6.0. Very high impact publications include one paper in Nature lead by a PhD student from Tezpur university, two in Nature Astronomy and one in Physical review letter. In collaboration with SPPU-Physics department IUCAA has started a two year M.Sc Physics (Astrophysics). This programme is beginning to attract