Advisory Board of START

 Professor (Dr.) Bhuwan Bhatt 

Prof. Bhuwan Bhatt recently retired as Professor/Senior Scientist from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bengaluru. He has over 38 years of professional career in the fields of Astronomy & Astrophysics and allied sciences, encompassing research, development, facility building, administration, teaching, and science outreach.

Born in 1963 in Dwarahat (Uttarakhand), he completed his early education near Nainital and obtained his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. from Kumaon University. He begun his career with Site Survey in Shivalik hills for a larger telescope project and later culminated his experience in identifying and developing High altitude site in Hanle Ladakh. He played a key role in establishing the Indian Astronomical Observatory, Hanle (Ladakh), including the installation of the 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope at an altitude of 4,500 m. He later headed the CREST Campus of IIA at Hoskote, and made significant contributions to facility building for remote telescope operations of HCT–Ladakh, as well as the development of Space Laboratory for space astronomy payload facilities for UVIT (ASTROSAT) and VELC (ADITYA–L1).

He observed extensively with 2-m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (IIA-Hanle), 1m-Sampoornanand and 3.6m DOT of ARIES for his research in Galactic Astronomy. He did collaborative research work with Wisconsin University, NASA funded MANX project with Hawaii University, USA for planetary and comet research and Carbon dioxide global Indian contribution and carbon deposit/aerosol study with LSCE-Sacley France/CSIR-4PI and VSCC-ISRO, India and contributed in high altitude CO2 and Aerosol Observatory at Hanley-Ladakh.

He has published over 80 research papers in peer-reviewed journals and more than 40 in colloquia/seminars/meetings/short communication cand popular science articles in Vigyan Pragati. During all this period, he appeared in national print and electronics media on articles and on live launch panel discussion on Mars Orbitor, Chandrayaan, AstroSAT and Aditya SUN missions.

After retirement also, he is very much engaged in popularization of Astronomy & Astrophysics at school/college level at Uttrakhand and interact with the students/teachers and talk about the hidden mystery of our Universe. Plan to promote the subject and highlighting the Uttarakhand sky for astro gazing and astrophotography with promotion and awareness about light pollution around to help providing help to local youths for sustainable development in the region using astronomy knowledge.