Fellowships, Honors & Awards

Curriculum Vitae

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Fellowships, Honors, & Awards

2024: Fellow, American Astronomical Society.

2023: Fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences; American Association for the Advancement for Science; New England Choice Award for Achievement in the Sciences.

2022: Genius Award, Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey.

2022: Schrodinger Visiting Chair at the Pauli Center for Theoretical Physics, Zurich, Switzerland.

2021: Member, Aspen Center for Physics; Invited Plenary at the Sixteenth Marcel Grossmann meeting on General Relativity; Annual Lakshmi Raman Memorial Lecture at IIT, Madras, India; Invited plenary speaker at the Annual Meeting of the American Astronomical Society; Annual Nelson Lecturer, Georgia State University.

2019: Annual McLennan Lecture, St. Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada; Annual C.V. Vishveshwara Lecture at the International Center for Theoretical Sciences at Bangalore, India; CIERA DIstinguished Lecture, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.

2019: Invited Lecture at the Royal Academy of Art on Science & Art, London, U.K.

2019: Invited to show VR experience “Lunatick” at the Venice Biennale, Venice, Italy.

2019: Invited Speaker at the World Forum, Boulder, CO; Distinguished Immigrant Award, State of Connecticut, Hartford, CT; Invited Lecturer at the University of Hawaii – Better Tomorrow Distinguished Speaker Series, Manoa, Hawaii; Annual Bartlett Lecture at the Frontiers of Science, Linda Hall Library of Science, Kansas City, Missouri.

2018: Gustav Ranis International Book Prize for book Mapping The Heavens from MacMillan Center for International Studies, Yale University; The WTMA Roy Moon Distinguished Lecture, San Angelo, TX.

2017: Kameshwar Wali Lecture, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY; The Annual Smithsonian Lecture, Washington D.C.

2017: Finalist, Physics World’s Best Science Books of the Year for book Mapping the Heavens; Honorable Mention Award, American Publishers Association for book Mapping the Heavens.

2017: Benjamin Dean Lecturer, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA.

2016: Invited Opening Speaker, Aspen Ideas Festival, Aspen Institute, Aspen, CO.

2015: Subrahmanyan Bharati Award for Achievement in the Sciences from the Vanavil Cultural Foundation, Chennai, India; Tamil-American Pioneer Award, Foundation of Tamil Americans, San Jose, CA.

2014: Elected Fellow of the Board for the Edge Foundation, Zug, Switzerland.

2013: The Niels Bohr Lecture at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Distinguished visitor, Morningside College, Hongkong, P.R.C.

2012 – present: Member, Advisory Board, ScienceNow, NOVA.

2012 – 2014: Advisor, Science & Technology futures panel, Planning Commission, Government of India.

2012: Paco Yndurian visiting fellowship, Department of Theoretical Physics, UAM, Madrid, Spain.

2011 – 2012: Fellowship at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center, Bellagio, Italy; India Empire NRI Award, India Empire Foundation; Fellow, American Physical Society; Caroline Herschel Distinguished Visiting Fellow, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD.

2010: Fellow, Explorers Club; Board Member, Indiaspora Foundation; Face of the Future Award, The India Abroad Foundation.

2009: Award for Academic Achievement from the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin (GOPIO). 2009: Guggenheim Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

2008: Radcliffe Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University; Fellow, Royal Astronomical Society.

2006: Elected to a Whitney Humanities Fellowship at Yale University.

2006: Kavli Frontiers Fellow, National Academy of Sciences.

1997: Elected to Title A Research Fellowship, Trinity College.

1993: Fellow, Cambridge Philosophical Society; Fellow, Cambridge Commonwealth Society.

1993: Awarded the Isaac Newton Studentship, University of Cambridge; External Research Studentship, Trinity College.

1991: Ida Green Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1990: The Carroll Wilson Award, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

1989: Elected to National Honor Societies – Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Pi Sigma and Sigma Xi.

1988: Peter J. Eloranta Award for Undergraduate Research and the Burchard Fellowship, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.