30th Annual Report 2017-18

41 and at the SouthernAfrican Large Telescope, near Cape Town, SouthAfrica, which is partly owned by the Indian Government through IUCAA. In future, vast quantities of optical spectroscopic data of galaxies are planned to be taken with theAnglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) to understand how such enormous structures may have formed in the distant Universe. The discovery team of Saraswati , led by Joydeep Bagchi , has been awarded the prestigious year 2018 New Discovery Award constituted by theAstronomical Society of India (ASI). Role of the IUCAAAssociateship Programme in this Discovery One important component of IUCAA's academic activities is theAssociateship Programme, under which a faculty member of an Indian university or a post-graduate department in a college can visit IUCAA. They can and often do bring their UG or PG students with them to take part in the collaborative research. This discovery is special because it is a direct product of IUCAA's University Associateship Programme. While three of the authors are from IUCAA, the other three authors are from Indian University sector; IISER (Pune), NIT (Jamshedpur) and one IUCAAVisiting Associate (Newman College, Thodupuzha, Kerala).