Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy: Research Experience for Teachers
I run the NSF funded Research Experience for Teachers Site, WVU.
2017 - Current

• I taught Digital Signal Processing to high school teachers every summer using practical labs based on GNURadio. Additionally, helped them gain an in depth understanding of radio telescope instrumentation and radio astronomy by helping them build 21cm horn antennas along with their GNURadio based backends
• Created and maintain the web infrastructure to host lectures, laboratory exercises and lessons. Assisted teachers create lessons and have built along with them a website with lessons. see https://wvurail.org/dspira-lessons
• Assist teachers conduct workshops virtually or visit their schools. I also lead monthly meetings with teachers and enthusiasts from across the country.
• I maintain the GNURadio out-of-tree module software package tailored for radio astronomy. see https://github.com/WVURAIL/gr-radio_astro
  

TONE: A CHIME/FRB Outrigger Prototype
Primary PhD thesis project advised by Dr. Kevin Bandura, WVU/GBO.
2016 -- Current

• I led the building of an array of 6m parabolic dishes at the Green Bank Observatory to serve as a VLBI station to achieve milli-arc-second localizations of one-off Fast Radio Bursts from a 3000+ km baseline.
• I assembled, tested and debugged the analog chain including antennas, low noise amplifiers, RFoF transceivers.
• Integrated and debugged the digital backend including the FPGA ICE boards and the baseband recorder server on site. Also set up the VLBI triggering system.
• Worked on analysis of the baseband dump including, calibration, beamforming and cross correlation leading to the localization of the triggered pulses & Fast Radio Bursts.
• Actively perform troubleshooting and Maintainence of the instrument

Visiting Student Program at Raman Research Institute
Advised by Prof. Avinash Deshpande, RRI.
2014 - 2015

• Worked on a gamut of small projects helping in the 'phase 0' of the Sky Watch Array Network (SWAN) with the primary goal of gaining a wide exposure to the field radio astronomy and instrumentation. Investigating the application of hough transforms to detect dispersed pulses.

A Nuanced Thermal Analysis of a Proposed Living Space on Mars
Advised by Prof. Satyajit Ghosh, VIT University.
2014

• Running a PlanetWRF (Planet Weather Research and Forecast Model) Simulation of the Martian atmosphere & visualise the netCDF output using IDL(GDL) & MATLAB. The results were interpreted to choose a site for the living space on the surface, the materials & optimise the structural design.

Investigation of Neural Networks for Flow Rate Approximation
Advised by Prof. K. V. Lakshmi Narayana, VIT University.
2014

• Bachelors Dissertation project in the domain of Artificial Neural Networks & Intelligent sensors culminating in an implementation on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs).

Development of Assistive Technologies for the Visually Impaired
Advised by Dr. Theodore Moallem, VIT University.
2013

TONE: A CHIME/FRB Outrigger Pathfinder To Localize Fast Radio Bursts Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry
Talk at the USNC-URSI National Radio Science Meeting, January 10-14, 2023.

TONE: 6m diameter 8 dish array as a CHIME/FRB outrigger testbed & proof of concept
Lightning talk at the Science at Low Frequencies VIII online conference, December 6-9, 2021.

On Building Radio Telescopes: From Radio Astronomy for Classrooms to Detecting Fast Radio Bursts
Public Lecture at the Marshall University's Faces of Physics Speaker Series., April 2021.

Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy: An Interdisciplinary Experience
Talk at the 2019 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference (ISEC) at Princeton University, NJ, USA., 2019.

An Instrumentation Design Framework to detect Fast Radio Bursts
Poster at the 32nd URSI GASS, Montreal., 19-26 August 2017.

A Nuanced Thermal Analysis of a Proposed Living Space on Mars
Poster at the Eighth International Conference on Mars held at Caltech, CA, USA., July 2014.

Large Collaborations

Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME):

Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment/Fast Radio Burst (CHIME/FRB): Primarily work with baseband data with specific focus on VLBI localization using outriggers. Service duties include helping with the online dissemination first CHIME/FRB catalog, being a team leader of one of four science result verication teams,among others. Help lead the on site assembly and commissioning of the CHIME/FRB Outrigger site at GBO.

Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX): Assembly and testing of low noise amplifiers. The 6m Dish array at Green Bank Observatory - TONE has also served as a HIRAX prototype array where it has been used for LNA testing, array calibration, characterization and drone experiments.

Tools : Linux, emacs, vim, git, zsh

Scientific and Astronomy computing : High competence using the Python language along with extensive usage of numpy, astropy, scipy and other packages. Experience with CUDA, pycuda and numba for high performance computing. Worked with a multitude of astronomical data formats and have familiarity with HPC systems

Programming Languages : C, Python, linux shell scripting, FORTRAN, IDL, NCL, MATLAB, Assembly

Engineering Skills : Can execute basic workshop routines and am well versed in engineering drawing. Possess acute familiarity with electronics lab testing and measurement equipment. Trained in soldering electronics including surface mount components and the use of reflow machines. Extensive experience with Digital Signal Processing including working with software defined radio using GNURadio as well as Field Programmable Gate Arrays.

Web Development Technologies : HTML, CSS, JavaScript \& related JavaScript frameworks such as VueJS, etc.

Service

McGill Physics Hackathon 2020: Judge