We hope you all are preparing for holidays after exams. Wait! There's something exciting that we need to tell you! One of the lectures of the famous Einstein Lectures series of International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS) is being organised in the campus of IIT Mandi 14th June 2018 at 11:00AM at A1-NKN. I feel very proud and happy to tell you that Prof. Parameswaran Ajith is visiting us to deliver the lecture. You all will be glad to know that he had a major contribution behind the latest discovery of Gravitational waves, and of course the Nobel Prize. He is a member of LIGO Scientific Collaboration. and LIGO India as well. Have a look at this news article: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india/meet-the-indian-scientists-behind-gravitational-waves-discovery/story-ti0JnF1RkWWpjS2tFIzUNM.html
Here is the Abstract of the Lecture and a short bio-sketch of Prof. Ajith:
One of the most striking discoveries of recent times is that of gravitational waves.
The existence of these elusive ripples in the spacetime was predicted by Albert Einstein a hundred years ago. At times, even Einstein doubted the existence of gravitational waves in nature and never imagined that they would ever be detected. The recent discovery opens up a new branch of observational astronomy that is unique in several senses. This lecture will tell the exciting story of this discovery, what went behind, and what lies ahead.
Bio sketch: Parameswaran Ajith
Parameswaran Ajith is Associate Professor at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore where he leads the Astrophysical Relativity group. His research spans various aspects of gravitational-wave physics and astronomy, including theoretical modeling of astrophysical sources, gravitational-wave data analysis and observational tests of general relativity. He has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 2004. Ajith is a Ramanujan Fellow, a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar and the head of the Max Planck Partner Group on Astrophysical Relativity at ICTS. As a member of the LIGO discovery team, he is the recipient of the 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physic and the 2016 Gruber Cosmology Prize.
I invite all of you to this lecture. This is a matter of pride for STAC to be able to host a Scientist like Prof. Ajith in IIT Mandi Campus. If you have ever thought of pursuing Physics, he can be a role model! After all not every one has his name in a research that got Nobel Prize and is being stated as one of the biggest discoveries of this decade.
