NEW DELHI: Eminent astrophysicist Somak Raychaudhury has been appointed as vice chancellor of Ashoka University, officials said on Thursday.
Raychaudhury, who is currently director of the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), will take over from Professor Malabika Sarkar who has been serving as the VC since August 2019.
"Professor Raychaudhury's appointment follows an extensive global search conducted by a Search Committee consisting of the chancellor, deans, faculty members, founders and trustees of Ashoka University. His date of joining will be announced shortly," the varsity said in a statement.
Raychaudhury holds a PhD in Astrophysics from Churchill College, University of Cambridge and undergraduate degrees in Physics from Trinity College at University of Oxford and Presidency College at University of Calcutta.
He was earlier the Head of Department of Physics and Dean of Sciences at Presidency University.
He also held various positions at the University of Birmingham, UK; the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics and Lowell House at Harvard University; and the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge.
Raychaudhary is one of India's leading observational astronomers, and has made seminal discoveries using observations at radio, optical and X-ray frequencies.
He pioneered the study of galaxy superclusters as the universe's largest structures, and has worked on exotic stars such as black holes in nearby galaxies.
"He has developed innovative machine-learning algorithms for mining large astronomical datasets, and recently co-chaired the committee to compile the vision document for the next decade of astronomy research for the Government of India," the statement added.