Rupal Basak
e-mail: rupal@camk.edu.pl
Academic Qualification
Postdoc | Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Warsaw, Poland | 2014 - Present |
PhD | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India | 2009 - Sep 2014 |
Advisor: Prof. A. R. Rao, TIFR | ||
Title: "Spectral and Timing Analysis of the Prompt Emission of Gamma Ray Bursts" | ||
Justice Oak outstanding thesis award by Astronomical Society of India | ||
M. Sc. | Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur (IITK) | 2007 - 2009 |
Topper in two out of four semesters | ||
B. Sc. | University of Calcutta | 2004 - 2007 |
Topper of the college |
Successful Research Grants
- PI in ‘START’ (2016–17): 46,000 Polish zloty (fellowship & travel grant). Awarded by Foundation for Polish Science for young researchers among all academic disciplines in Poland (success rate 9.37%).
- PI in Young researcher grant (2016–17): for individual project titled ‘Study of X-ray Binary and
Gamma-ray Burst with Astrosat’ at Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (2016).
- PI in Young researcher grant (2015–16): for individual project titled ‘Radiation process in a spine-
sheath jet of gamma-ray burst’ at Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center (2015).
- Co-I: Inflows and outflows around black holes and neutron stars, PI: A. Zdziarski (2015).
Awards and Fellowships
- Best Thesis: Justice Oak best thesis, Astronomical Society of India (2016). Competition based on
nomination of young Indian Astronomers who defended their thesis one year prior to the call.
- Postdoctoral fellowship: independent research at NCAC (2014–2017).
- NET JRF: Junior Research Fellowship in National Eligibility Test (2010).
- Graduate fellowship: at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (2009–14).
- VSP fellowship: Visiting Student Program at Harish Chandra Research Institute (2008).
- Institute merit scholarship: for academic excellence during Master’s study (2007–09).
- JBNSTS: Jagadish Bose National Science Talent Search fellowship in recognition as a creative student of basic science, among all students of science disciplines of the state (2004–2007).
- NGPE 2007: National top 1% in National Graduate Physics Examination (2007).
- Ramgopal-Bimala Agarwala Medal: Topper in college (Physics), Calcutta University (2007).
- Saruju Bala prize: highest total marks in all the college exams in Physics Dept (2007).
- NIUS: Selected for National Initiative on Undergraduate Science at HBCSE (2005).
Invited Talks
- Invited talk titled “Radiation mechanism and geometry of accretion disk in the hard state of black hole binary” to be delivered in the international conference ‘Wide Band Spectral and Timing Studies of Cosmic X-ray Sources’, TIFR, India, Jan 10 – 13, 2017.
- Invited talk titled “Spectroscopy of GRBs: clues for the radiation mechanism and jet geometry” in the international conference ‘Jet Triggering Mechanisms in Black Hole Sources’, TIFR, India, Jan 20 – 23, 2016.
- Invited talk titled “Pulse-wise GRB correlation: implication as a cosmological tool” in the international conference ‘Fourteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting’, Rome, July 12 – 18, 2015.
- Invited talk titled “The signature of the photosphere in the pulses of GRBs” in the international conference ‘Hard X-ray Astronomy: Astrosat and Beyond’, Goa, India, September 24 – 26, 2014.
- Invited talk titled “Prompt Emission of GRBs” at the IISc Astrophysics seminar series, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India, April 2, 2013.
- Invited talk titled “Temporal and spectral study of Fermi GRBs using different models and their interpretations” in the international conference ‘X-ray View of Cosmos’, Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), India, April 23 – 25, 2012.
Research Visits, Talks and Others
- Long term visit at ISDC, Switzerland for works related to Integral, May 27 – July 29, 2016.
- Poster “Thermal emission from the photosphere of GRB jet”, 9th Harvard-Smithsonian Conference
on Theoretical Astrophysics named ‘The Transient Sky’, USA, May 16 – 19, 2016.
- Poster titled “Spectral analysis of the XMM-Newton data of GX 339-4 in the low/hard state during
the outburst of 2013: Disk truncation radius and other issues” in the international conference ‘The
Extremes of Black Hole Accretion’, ESAC, Madrid, Spain, June 8 – 10, 2015.
- Group project, ‘Cloudy workshop’, Warsaw, May 4 – 8, 2015. Submitted paper in MNRAS.
- Poster “Nature of thermal emission from the photosphere of GRB jet” in ‘Relativistic Jets: Creation,
Dynamics, and Internal Physics’, Krakow, Poland, April 20 – 24, 2015.
- Talk titled “The prompt emission of gamma-ray bursts: signature of the thermal component” in
33rd Meeting of the Astronomical Society of India (ASI), Pune, India, February 17 – 20, 2015.
- Talk titled “Revisiting Photospheric Model of GRB Prompt Emission” and two posters titled “Study
of the Prompt Emission of GRBs With and Without Supernova” and “Time Resolved Spectral Analysis of Bright Fermi/LAT Detected GRBs” in YIPQS long-term international workshop ‘Supernovae and Gamma-Ray Bursts’, YITP, Kyoto, Japan, 28 Oct – 15 Nov, 2013.
- Poster titled “GRB as luminosity indicator” in the international IAU Symposium 296: ‘Supernova
environmental impacts’, Raichak, India, Jan 7 – 11, 2013.
- Talk titled “Spectral Evolution in GRB Pulses” in the international ‘Young Astrophysicists Symposium’, Mumbai, Dec 19 – 21, 2012.
- Talk in ‘Winter School on Astronomical and Cosmological Surveys’, Mumbai, Dec 10 – 17, 2012.
- Talk titled “A New Pulse-wise Correlation of GRB Prompt Emission: A Possible Cosmological
Probe” in ‘39th COSPAR Scientific Assembly’, Mysore, India, June 14 – 22, 2012.
- Talk titled “Pulse Spectral Evolution of GRBs: Implication as Standard Candle” in the international
‘Fermi / Swift GRB Conference 2012’, Munich, Germany, May 7 – 11, 2012.
- Talk titled “Temperature evolution of GRB pulses: reviewing Band model” in the international
workshop ‘Advanced Workshop on X-ray Timing’, IUCAA, Pune, January 23 – 28, 2012.
- Attended International Conference on Gravitation and Cosmology, Goa, Dec 14 – 19, 2011.
Scientific Collaboration
- Astrosat team: Associated with the multi-wavelength mission, Astrosat which was successfully
launched on Sep 28, 2015. Developed codes to analyze the laboratory data of CZT Imager (CZTI).
Performed laboratory testing and characterization of Charge Particle Monitor (CPM). Currently, involved in data analysis of GRBs (lead role) and XRBs detected by the mission.
- Integral team: Collaboration at Integral Science Data Center (ISDC), Switzerland (contact: Dr. E.
Bozzo) for analysis of recently detected low mass X-ray binaries and classification of one new source.
Another long term project concerns analysis of 13 years of Integral data of all neutron star binaries.
This study will enable us to find novel signature of different states and better understanding of these
sources.
- Theseus: ‘Transient High Energy Sky and Early Universe Surveyor’ is a planned GRB mission (ESA
M5 call), specialized to detect high redshift GRBs. I joined the consortium (contributory scientist)
based on an invitation from the PI, Dr. Lorenzo Amati (INAF, Bologna) in 2016.
Mentoring Activity
- Mentoring a PhD student under Prof. A. R. Rao on various projects related to GRBs through Skype
meeting and occasional visits (since 2015). 1 published paper, 2 in preparation.
- Mentored undergraduate students under the NIUS program for the analysis of GRBs detected by the
Fermi (2012 – 2013). 1 published paper.
- Mentored Master’s students under Visiting Students’ Research Programme (VSRP) at TIFR in testing
of the CZTI instrument of ASTROSAT (May – July, 2013).
- Helped research students from various institutes for laboratory testing of CZTI during 2013 – 2014.
Science Popularization activity
- NCAC Highlighted research: The paper ‘Thermal Emissions Spanning the Prompt and the Afterglow Phases of the Ultra-long GRB 130925A’ by Basak & Rao (2015, ApJ) was selected for the highlighted research by the public outreach at NCAC, July 2015.
- Journal Club: Arranged journal clubs at TIFR and at NCAC (twice each).
- TIFR FoS: Frontiers of Science at TIFR (3 times during 2012–14). Volunteered for Astrophysics
laboratory. Explained ASTROSAT to school students.
Skills
- Gamma-ray Astronomy: Data analysis of Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT).
- X-ray Astronomy: X-ray data analysis of Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), X-ray Telescope
(XRT), Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM), Chandra Advanced CCD Imaging Spectrome-
ter (ACIS), NuSTAR, XMM-Newton, RXTE Proportional Counter Array (PCA), High Energy X-ray
Timing Experiment (HEXTE), Suzaku, Integral Imager on-Board the INTEGRAL Satellite (IBIS),
Jem-X, Maxi. Spectral, timing and imaging analysis. Spectral software XSPEC , imaging software DS9 and
timing software G HATS developed by Prof. T. Belloni of INAF, Italy.
- Optical and Radio Astronomy: Moderate experience with Optical and Radio data analysis. Photo-
metric analysis with IRAF and Radio data analysis with AIPS.
- Computer Skills: FORTRAN, IDL, PYTHON, MATLAB , MATHEMATICA. GRB software RMFIT,
CIAO for Chandra, XMMSAS for XMM-Newton etc. Developed semi-automatic codes for the analysis
of the GRB data based on IDL, XSPEC script, local and table model. Softwares developed for the
analysis of the laboratory data of CZTI and CPM detector of ASTROSAT.