Girish Kulkarni

Girish Kulkarni

I am a faculty member in the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in Mumbai, India, and the head of a partner group of the Max Planck Institute of Astronomy (MPIA) of Heidelberg, Germany.

My research is in the area of astrophysics and cosmology. I study the properties of the universe in the first billion years of its existence. Some of the questions I try to answer are how did the temperature of the universe evolve throughout the cosmic history; when and how did the first stars, black holes, and galaxies form; and what is the nature of dark matter. In my work, I collaborate closely with experimentalists as part of programmes such as SKA, REACH and XQR-30 that exploit some of the biggest current and upcoming astronomical facilities across the world.

Contact me if you are interested in doing a departmental project or a PhD thesis with me. Also get in touch if you are looking for a postdoc position to work with me, or if you would like to visit TIFR. I am currently not available to work with students for masters or summer projects.

Contact

Department of Theoretical Physics
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research
Homi Bhabha Road
Mumbai 400005, India


Office: A323
Email: kulkarni@theory.tifr.res.in
Phone: +91 (0) 22–22782427


News

People

Nabendu Khan (PhD student; intergalactic medium)
Sooryabalan Murugesan (Master’s student; black holes)
Vibin Narayanan (PhD student; black holes)
Sameer Patil (Guest researcher; epoch of reionization)
Pooja Rani (PhD student; cosmic dawn)
Sindhu Satyavolu (PhD student; black holes)
Jahaan Thakkar (Departmental Project student; epoch of reionization)
Krishna Vijayan (Master’s student; black holes)
Shikhar Asthana (former master’s student; now at University of Cambridge)
Shikhar Mittal (former PhD student; now at University of Cambridge)
Janakee Raste (former postdoctoral researcher; now at NCRA)
Sreeta Roy (former master’s student; now at University of Warsaw)
Mohit Saharan (former master’s student; now at Radboud University)
Yash Sharma (former master’s student; now at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)
Tomáš Šoltinský (former postdoctoral researcher; now at INAF Trieste)

Recent Talks

2024 June 3: “Lyman-α at Cosmic Dawn” (Cosmic Dawn at High Latitudes Nordita programme, Stockholm)

2023 December 11: “Modelling the 21-cm Signal” (Advanced 21-cm Cosmology School, NISER)

2023 November 23: “Computing the Early Universe” (“GW-EM-Nu” conference, TIFR)

2023 May 18: “Lyman-α at High Redshifts” (“Neutral Hydrogen Cosmology” conference, Nazareth, Israel)

2023 March 6: “Quasar Proximity Zones in the Epoch of Reionization” (“Understanding the Epoch of Cosmic Reionization” conference, Sesto, Italy)

2023 March 1: “AGN Science with LSST” (Annual Meeting of the Astonomical Society of India, Indore, India)

2023 February 21: “Emergence of a Concordance Model of Reionization” (“Frontiers in Cosmology” conference, Bengaluru, India)

2023 January 20: “Timescales of Cosmic Reionizatoin” (“Timescales in Astrophysics” conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE)

2022 November 1: “Modelling HI signal from EoR/CD” (“21-cm Cosmology in the SKA Era” conference, Kolkata, India)

2022 October 4: “The need for obscured supermassive black hole growth to explain quasar proximity zone sizes” (“Cosmic Dawn with the James Webb Space Telescope—Cycle 1 lessons and plans for Cycle 2” conference, Ringberg Castle, Germany)

Teaching

2019: Mathematical Methods
2019: Numerical Methods
2020: Computational Physics
2023: Numerical Methods
2024: Computational Physics