Tousif Islam | Astro Data Detective

Tousif Islam (তৌসিফ ইসলাম) Follow @TauSigmaIota

Data Detective (তথ্যের ব্যোমকেশ) | Gravitational Astrophysicist (মহাকর্ষীয় জ্যোতির্বিজ্ঞানী) | Amateur Writer (শখের সাহিত্যিক) | Noob Artist (আনাড়ি শিল্পী)

*****Announcement***** : BS or MS students intersted in working with me for their thesis are encouraged to write to me at tousif.islam@kitp.ucsb.edu or tousifislam24@gmail.com

Hello World!

I am a Kavli Postdoctoral Scholar at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), University of California Santa Barbara with Prof. Tejaswi Venumadhav and Prof. Lars Bildsten. I am also a Long-term Visiting Postdoctoral Scholar at the Theoretical AstroPhysics Including Relativity and Cosmology (TAPIR), California Institute of Technology with Prof. Saul Teukolsky. I did my PhD at the Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research (CSCVR), University of Massachusetts (UMass) Dartmouth where I worked on gravitational wave astronomy with Prof. Scott Field, Prof. Gaurav Khanna and Prof. Vijay Varma. There, I was a member of the recently formed UMass-University of Rhodes Island (URI) Gravity Research Consortium (U²GRC). With my encouraging list of Collaborators, I now investigate exciting issues in GW sciences. My expertise lies in building reduced order surrogate models for GWs from binary black hole mergers and employing them in data analysis. I am always happy to talk about my works and discuss possible collaborations. Please write to me if you are interested.

Academic Geodesics

I passed Secondary School Examination and Higher-Secondary School Examination with 9th and 14th rank out of 1 million and 0.7 million students respectively. I was awarded Haji Md Mohsin Endowment Fund Scholarship from the West Bengal Minorities' Development and Finance Corporation (WBMDFC) of the Govt. of West Bengal, India.

I pursued integrated BS-MS in Physics from Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata. I had been an INSPIRE Scholar [supported by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Govt. of India; from 2013-2018] throughout my undergraduate. My MS Thesis work with Prof. Koushik Dutta and Prof. Rajesh Kumble Nayak focused on testing astrophysical viability of gravitational theories beyond general relativity. I graduated in 2018 with the Best MS Thesis (Physics) award (out of 43 students).

Prior to joining PhD at UMass, I was a student at the International Center for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) at Bengaluru, India. I worked with Prof. Parameswaran Ajith on testing the nature of binaries using gravitational waves.

During my undergrad, I did internship at the following institutes in India and Europe:

2017-18	Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, India
2017 May-July	Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille, France
2016 May-July	Raman Research Institute, India
2015 May-July	Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay
2014 May-July	Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali

Research

I am a member of the LIGO-Virgo collaboration, LISA Consortium and Simulating Extreme Spacetimes (SXS) collaboration. For details of my research works, please navigate the following tabs. My research focuses on many aspects of Gravitational-Wave astronomy and beyond GR theories. I work primarily on building reduced order surrogate models from binary black holes based on Numerical Relativity data and point-particle black-hole perturbation theory (ppBHPT) waveforms.

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Portfolio

Please navigate the following tabs to know more about my works.