30th Annual Report 2017-18

DIRECTOR'S REPORT 15 (May 23, 2017) When the Nobel Prize for Physics was announced for the year 2017, we were very happy to welcome the fact that it was awarded for the detection of GravitationalWaves by the LIGOObservatories, situated in the USA, and the impact it has had on the world of Physics and associated Technology. Of about one thousand authors of the discovery paper, 37 were affiliated with Indian Institutions, and a dozen were from IUCAA. Indeed, the Indian Initiative in Gravitational-wave Observations (IndIGO), was formed and consolidated at IUCAA, over a decade ago. Since the first discovery in 2015, scientists and students at IUCAA, and in various parts of the country have been increasingly involved in gravitational wave research, and this academic year has been dominated by the new discoveries in this science, in particular, the electromagnetic detection of the counterpart of an event, which turned out to be a pair of coalescing neutron stars. IUCAA is the institution responsible for the scientific and human resource aspects of LIGO-India, which involves setting up the third LIGO detector on Indian soil, a mega-science initiative taken up by the Government of India through the DAE and DST. The UGC has shown support even at this early stage by sanctioning newpositions and resources available to this initiative at IUCAA. As you would see in the research highlights that follow this report, this was also the first year in which the first scientific results from India's first multi-wavelength astrophysical observatory in space,AstroSat, was published, and already the facility is providing ground- breaking insight into the Physics of stars. TheAstroSat Science Support Cell has been established at IUCAA, supported by ISRO, which provides a unique opportunity for researchers at Indian Colleges and Universities at all levels, and IUCAAmembers, to carry out their scientific research with AstroSat. An excellent team at IUCAA is also building the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (SUIT), a payload for ISRO's future Aditya-L1 mission to study the Sun. Substantial work has begun at IUCAA conceptualizing many of the future space projects in science that might be taken up by ISRO for launch. One of the core outcomes of IUCAA-led research that caught the attention of the media worldwide is the discovery of the largest structure of galaxies in the Universe, about half a billion light-years across, named, Saraswati Supercluster. This involved researchers and students working at various Indian Colleges and Universities, collaborating with IUCAA researchers as part of its Associateship Programme. The details of this discovery could be found in thisAnnual Report under the title, Highlights of Research. This year we were very happy to host a national symposium, Shodh Shiksha Samiksha, highlighting the Impact of the Inter-University Centres of the UGC on Research and Teaching at Indian Universities and HE Institutions, for which we were fortunate to welcome the HRDMinister, Shri Prakash Javadekar; the Secretary of the Department of Higher Education, Dr Kewal K. Sharma; and the Chairman of the UGC, Dr Virander S. Chauhan, for this event. The details of this symposiumcould be found in thisAnnual Report. IUCAA currently has 23 Faculty and Emeritus Professors, 27 Post-doctoral Fellows and 41 Ph.D. Research Scholars. They have collectively published 149 peer-reviewed papers, with a mean impact factor of 5.2. Over this year, two IUCAAResearch Scholars have obtained Ph.D. degrees. I am very proud of this statistics, since it shows that my colleagues are not just very productive in their research, but they are making a substantial impact on the subject. Even more gratifying is the fact that the 156VisitingAssociates of IUCAA, who are faculty members at Indian Colleges and Universities, supported in their research by IUCAA, have published 283 peer-reviewed papers during the same period. This clearly indicates the impact IUCAA has in promoting and nurturing Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A) research at institutions of higher education all over the country. This year saw the establishment of the Teaching Learning Centre in Astronomy and Astrophysics at IUCAA under the Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching of the HRD. IUCAA is committed to support the teaching of A &A at