Professor Yashwant Gupta

Professor Yashwant Gupta obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. in Radio Astronomy from the University of California, San Diego in 1990, after completing his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur in 1985.  Since 1991, he has been working at the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics (NCRA, Pune) of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research where he currently holds the position of Senior Professor.  In March 2005, he was appointed to the position of Chief Scientist at the Giant Metre-wave Radio Telescope (GMRT) -- a world class instrument built and operated by the NCRA and located about 80 km from Pune.  Since 2010, he holds the position of Dean, GMRT Observatory.  His Ph.D. thesis was on the study of propagation of radio signals from pulsars through the inter-stellar medium of our Galaxy.  His present research interests continue to be mainly in the area of pulsars : studying the details of their emission process and discovering new objects of this exotic species -- activities he continues to pursue actively using facilities such as the GMRT. He has over 100 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings. He also has significant interest and involvement in instrumentation and signal processing applications in radio astronomy.  Since the early days of the GMRT, he has made significant contributions towards the development of the complex digital back-end receivers for the telescope.  A considerable amount of his time at present also goes in leading the effort of a major technological upgrade of the GMRT.  In addition, he also leads the technincal involvement of India in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) -- an international collaborative project to design and build the next generation global radio astronomy facility. He has over 25 years of experience in active research and technical activities in radio astronomy, with over 12 years of experience in leadership roles in technological innovations, and over 7 years of experience in organisational and administrative leadership positions.He was awarded the Young Scientist Award of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) in 1996 at Lille, France.  More recently, he has been conferred the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in the Physical Sciences, for the year 2007.   He has been elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences of India, in 2007; and also elected a fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences in January, 2008.