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Come July 2007, I will be (hopefully!) passing out of IITM, majoring in Aerospace Engineering. I chose this major primarily with an eye on Astrodynamics. As I found out later, very few in India (My search was restricted to Academic institutions)actually do active research in this area. This surprised me considering the fact that India's first moon mission is just around the corner. May be things will improve with the success of this mission. But since then, my interests have widened, largely thanks IITM's wonderful library. Broadly speaking, I am into Theoretical Physics with specific interests in Cosmology.But being in Aero has also given me a great opportunity to learn lots of physics and esp continuum mechanics (in great detail).So no regrets whatsoever!

Over the past two decades, the data available for testing Cosmological Models has grown manifold. Though much is yet to be understood, we have come a long way in the past few years. These are good times to work in Cosmology! An outstanding problem in Cosmology has been that of Structure Formation.. How did the Stars, Galaxies and their clusters form from the 'initial conditions' ? For long, fundamental problems plagued both aspects of the problem..the "initial conditions" and the "evolution". But these days, combined with a better understanding of elementary particle physics and reliable observational data, we are able to make reasonable guesses about what would have happened in the past. This summer('05), I spent some time at the Harish Chandra Research Institute trying to understand Cosmological Perturbation Theory which forms an important part of the attempts to understand Structure Formation. A short report that I wrote for myself can be found here(in pdf) and here(in xml). U will require a MathML enabled browser to view the latter. I also gave a seminar on some of the aspects of perturbation theory at the end of my stay. The slides for that talk can be had from here.
Currently, I am expanding on my understanding of Cosmology and Particle Physics with a particular interest in understanding the Inflationary Scenario.I am currently learning the basics of Quantum Field Theory and aspects of Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking. I maintain a reference list for myself. For more on my academic life, browse through the links provided under the head "Inside Academics".