SMRITI MAHAJAN
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali
Smriti Mahajan is an observational astrophysicist, specialising in evolution of galaxies. She did her PhD from the University of Birmingham, the UK, in 2011, followed by post-doctoral research at the Harvard-Smithsonian centre for astrophysics, USA and the University of Queensland, Australia. Currently, she is a DST-SERB INSPIRE Faculty fellow employed at IISER Mohali. Smriti Mahajan was selected Associate in 2018.
SESSION 1C – Inaugural Lectures by Fellows/Associates
Arnab Rai Chaudhuri
Evolution of galaxies in the cosmic-suburbs
Star formation is vital for the growth of galaxies and structures in the Universe. But the rate at which a galaxy forms stars is determined by several factors, such as its mass, age and environment, where the environment is often characterized by the number density of objects in the vicinity of a galaxy. In this talk, the speaker will show that the intermediate-density environment prevalent in the large-scale filaments are crucial for the evolution of galaxies. She will present a case study of the Coma supercluster, where she used different techniques to characterize the environment into clusters, filaments and voids in order to examine the multi-wavelength properties of galaxies as a function of their environment. Her results show that galaxies become passive not only as they approach the nearest cluster, but also as they approach the spine of the filaments. Her observations suggest that filaments are crucial to the evolution of galaxies in the nearby universe.