IUCAA Brochure 2024

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 researchers 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 universities have also evolved as per the demands of the changing research and technology landscape in the country and abroad. Indian Astronomy is expected to go through a major revolution 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, Xposat, Daksha, INSIST, etc.) and (iii) rapidly growing computational resources (e.g National Supercomputing Mission, NSM). Successful outcomes from all these developments will depend on how well we can develop the required human Preface 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 to implement short and long-term strategic plans to move in this direction. At present, IUCAA's academic staff consists of 27 faculty members (including Emeritus Professors), 4 Adjunct faculty members, 50 PhD students, 24 Postdoctoral fellows, 45 Scientific and Technical staff, and 06 project students. The high level of scientific productivity of IUCAA academic staff is reflected in the fact that during this academic year, they have published about 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals. Due to sustained efforts by IUCAA, there is a clear increasing trend in the number of active University Associates with the current associate number of 216 expected to rise to close to 300 soon. In particular, efforts are being made to include people with technical skills that are useful for Astronomy missions from the engineering departments. Due to this increase in the number of Associates, there is a concurrent strong increase in the number of publications originating fromAssociates and their students. This document contains some highlights of the recent developments in various fields of research covered by IUCAA.