I am an Assistant Professor of Astronomy in the Caltech astronomy department. My professional focus is on exploring and understanding the ephemeral, unseen Universe. I study phenomena that vary on time-scales of nanoseconds to years, such as fast radio bursts, the tidal disruptions of stars by supermassive black holes, neutron-star outbursts, the radiation statistics of astrophysical masers and lasers, and gravitational waves from binary supermassive black holes. I also seek to understand the distribution and physical nature of diffuse and hot matter around and in between galaxies. My research interests are detailed below.

I am an Australian of Indian origin. Educated at the Valley School, Bangalore, and Narrabri High School, NSW Australia, (and by my astronomer parents!), I studied physics as part of the Bachelor of Philosophy (PhB) at the Australian National University. The PhB also offered remarkable research opportunities: as an undergrad, I worked in a Bose-Einstein condensate lab, and I also investigated new ways of modelling the Earth's climate. I undertook Honours research with Prof. Dayal Wickramasinghe, and Dr. George Hobbs, on coherent radio emission from stars (more below). While at University, I resided at Burgmann College.

I spent the Fall of 2008 on exchange at the University of California, Berkeley. An undergraduate research apprentice program with Prof. Charles Townes and the Infrared Spatial Interferometer group led to my employment at UC Berkeley during 2010-11 as a Junior Specialist. I studied yearly changes in the atmosphere of Betelgeuse, and worked with the CASPER group to develop an instrument to image shells of water around similarly evolved stars.

I completed my PhD (accepted Jan 2015) at the University of Melbourne, with Prof. Stuart Wyithe and Dr. George Hobbs (at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science). I developed predictions for gravitational-wave signals from orbiting pairs of supermassive black holes in merging galaxies, and tested these using decade-long timing data on millisecond pulsars from the Parkes telescope. My work provided the theoretical basis for two papers published in Science, led by Dr. Ryan Shannon, and resulted in two major thesis prizes, and me being invited to talk (video below) at a Kavli Frontiers of Science meeting in Makassar, Indonesia.

During my PhD, I also engaged in a selection of madcap ventures: investigations into an ultra-broadband pulsar system for the Australia Telescope Compact Array, searches for off-pulse emission and wind nebulae associated with a large pulsar sample, constraining the equation of state of matter at nuclear densities with gamma-ray burst and fast radio burst observations, and successful searches for fast radio bursts.

I then spent a part of 2014-15 working with Prof. Matthew Bailes and his group at Swinburne University on the nascent upgrade of the Molonglo Observatory to form a fast transient, pulsar and wide-field imaging behemoth (UTMOST).

I have since spent 2015-18 as a Millikan Fellow in Astronomy at Caltech, and 2018-19 as a Clay Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard and Smithsonian. My detailed CV and publications list can be found here.

To hear about some of the things I do (and to see that I can wear a jacket!), you can check out a video of my Clay Lecture at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (May 9, 2019).