Prof. Somak Raychaudhury

Professor Somak Raychaudhury is the vice chancellor of Ashoka University since 1st January 2023. Professor Raychaudhury is not just a world-renowned scientist, but also has a deep understanding of the humanities and social sciences. Professor Raychaudhury has had a distinguished academic career at the world’s leading institutions including Churchill College, University of Cambridge; Trinity College, University of Oxford; Presidency College, University of Calcutta; the University of Birmingham; the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Lowell House, Harvard University; and the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. He is one of India’s leading observational astronomers, and has made seminal discoveries, conducted pioneering research and developed innovative machine-learning algorithms. He also recently co-chaired the committee to compile the Vision document for the next decade of Astronomy research for the Government of India. Raychaudhury’s research interests lie in the study of the evolution of galaxies in group and clusters and on the supercluster filaments of the cosmic web. He has used optical, X-ray, radio, infrared and ultraviolet observations to understand how the transformation of galaxies are related to their local and global environment. He is involved in developing machine learning algorithms for astronomical data mining.