Featured Scholars Shaping the Future of Research
Abhay Ashtekar: Professor Abhay Ashtekar's pioneering research has made loop quantum gravity, a theory that describes spacetime at the quantum level, a leading approach for unifying general relativity and quantum mechanics. Professor Ashtekar continues to play a key role in the development of this theory and its sub-field; loop quantum cosmology. In recognition of his achievements, he was awarded the prestigious Einstein Prize in 2018 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2016, a top honour for scientists in America. Professor Ashtekar has also been elected a Fellow of both the American Association for Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. In addition, he has also been named an Honourary Fellow by the Indian Academy of Sciences, an honour reserved for only 51 scientists living outside of India.
His papers in IJMPD:
Properties of a recent quantum extension of the Kruskal geometry
Symmetry reduced loop quantum gravity: A bird’s eye view
Minisuperspaces: Observables and quantization
Polymer geometry at Planck scale and Quantum Einstein equations
Professor Ashtekar is also a series editor of the following book series:
https://www.worldscientific.com/series/100ygr
Varun Sahni: Varun Sahni is an Emeritus Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune. He did his BSc at St. Stephens College in Delhi and his MSc and PhD at Moscow State University where he worked under the supervision of distinguished Soviet scientists Prof. Ya.B. Zeldovich and Prof. A.A. Starobinsky. He joined IUCAA in 1991 after working as a post-doctoral fellow in the UK and Canada. He has delivered invited/plenary talks at international conferences held in several countries including USA, France, UK, Ireland, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Iran, Korea, Japan, Brazil, Estonia, Russia, and India. Prof. Sahni has written over 100 highly cited papers and reviews in leading international journals. He is a fellow of the Indian Academy of Science, the National Academy of Science of India, the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), and The World Academy of Science (TWAS). Prof. Sahni received many awards including the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award, the Vikram Sarabhai Award, the Homi Jehangir Bhabha medal, and the J.C. Bose national fellowship. He recently delivered the Vaidya-Raychaudhury award lecture at Ashoka University. Prof. Sahni works in the field of Cosmology with a focus on black holes, the physics of the early universe, gravity waves, the cosmic web, modified gravity & extra dimensions, dark matter, and dark energy.
His papers in IJMPD:
The case for a positive cosmological λ-term
Reconstructing dark energy
Can a variable gravitational constant resolve the faint young Sun paradox?
New vistas in Braneworld Cosmology
Tsvi Piran: Professor Tsvi Piran is the Schwarzmann Chair of Physics at the Racah Institute of Physics. Piran is best known for his work on Gamma-ray Bursts (GRBs) and was part of the team that proposed that GRBs originate from cosmological neutron star binary mergers and that R-process heavy elements are produced in the same event. This was later confirmed in 2017 with the discovery of gravitational waves from a merging neutron star that produces also a short GRB afterglow and a kilonova indicating the formation of R-process elements such as Gold. Professor Piran has published over 420 scientific papers with more than 37,500 citations and an H index of 100. In recognition of his outstanding scientific achievements, Professor Piran was awarded the Israeli EMET Prize for Physics and Space Sciences in 2019 and the 16th Marcel Grossman Award in 2021.
His papers in IJMPD:
The quantum interaction of macroscopic objects and gravitons
Neutron star mergers as sites of r-process nucleosynthesis and short gamma-ray bursts
Thibault Damour: Professor Thibault Damour is a theoretical physicist who has made significant contributions to the study of string theory, black holes, and gravitational waves. He played a role in the indirect detection of gravitational waves in the 1980s and more recently in their direct detection. His work includes describing the motion of two black holes and developing a theoretical approach to describe the final merger between two black holes and the emission of gravitational waves. In recognition of his exceptional contributions to theoretical physics he notably received the Gold Medal of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (2017), the Galileo Galilei medal (2021), the Dirac medal of the International Center for Theoretical Physics (2021) and the Balzan prize (2021).
His papers in IJMPD:
Symmetries, singularities and the de-emergence of space