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.

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)
Soumak Maitra (Postdoctoral researcher; epoch of reionization)
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)
Jahaan Thakkar (Departmental Project student; epoch of reionization)
Swanith Upadhye (Departmental Project student; epoch of reionization)
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)
Sindhu Satyavolu (former PhD student; now at Institute for High Energy Physics, Barcelona)
Yash Sharma (former master’s student; now at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)
Tomáš Šoltinský (former postdoctoral researcher; now at INAF Trieste)
Krishna Vijayan (former master’s student)

Recent Talks



2025 May 22: “The Bispectrum of LAEs from the Epoch of Reionization” (“Galaxy-IGM Interplay in the First Billion Years conference”, Trieste, Italy)

2025 May 16: “Towards Understanding the Epoch of Reionization out to the Cosmic Dawn” (KICC Special Seminar, Cambridge, UK)

2025 April 24: “Model-Independent Approaches to Integrating 21-cm and JWST Data” (“Building Indo-UK Collaboration towards the SKA conference” conference, Oxford, UK)

2025 April 14: “Physics of Reionization” (“Radio Cosmology in the SKA Era” school, Oxford, UK)

2025 April 13: “Three Puzzles from the First Billion Years” (ICTS “Kaapi with Kuriosity” Public Lecture, Nehru Planetarium, Bengaluru, India)

2025 April 9: “Model-Independent Approaches to Integrating 21-cm and JWST Data” (“Radio Cosmology in the SKA Era” conference, Oxford, UK)

2025 March 4: “ChatGPT as a Physicist’s Cognitive Assistant” (Theoretical Physics Colloquium, TIFR, Mumbai)

2025 January 31: “Constraining Physics with 21-cm Measurements from Cosmic Dawn” (Conference on Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics, Chengalpattu, India)

2024 December 12: “21cm forest and multi-wavelength observations of the early phase of our Universe” (Workshop on 21-cm Cosmology, Chennai, India)

2024 December 6: “Insights into Reionization from new JWST discoveries” (“Baryons Beyond Galactic Boundaries” conference, Pune, India)

Teaching



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