Scientists and Engineers

Anupama G. C. (IIA) : Segment Polishing / Science, Chair, India TMT management Advisory committee

Prof.G.C.Anupama is an observational astronomer, her research interests are in the area of transients - novae, supernovae, GRBs, TDE events and AGNs. She also has keen interests in the development of astronomical facilities. She headed the team (2001-2003) that was responsible for the comissioning and science verification of the 2m Himalayan Chandra Telescope (HCT) and instruments. She is currently the Professor-in-charge of the Indian Astronomical Observatory, the site of the HCT, and CREST (IIA). As a core member of India TMT, Anupama heads the M1 segments group (India). Anupama is also the Convenor of the TMT Time Domain ISDT

Amitesh Omar (ARIES) : SAC Member

Dr. Amitesh Omar has been working as a scientist in Aryabhatta Research Institute (ARIES), Nainital India since 2004. He completed his PhD from Raman Research Institute, Bangalore. He was a postdoctoral fellow, working for the LOFAR radio telescope’s design and development works at the Leiden University. His research works are in areas of galaxy astrophysics using optical and radio observations, groups and clusters of galaxies, and astronomical instrumentation. He played important roles in establishing India’s Devasthal observatory in Himalayas and installation of several observing facilities at ARIES. The Faint Object Spectrograph and Camera for the 3.6 meter Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT) was designed and developed in India under his supervision. He is currently chairperson of the Instrument review committee of the 3.6-m DOT. He is also country P.I. for the BRICS Intelligent Telescope Data Network - ITDN program of the BRICS countries.

Eswar Reddy Bacham (IIA) : Programme Director (ITCC)

Prof. Eswar Reddy is an astronomer at Indian Institute of Astrophyiscs. His area of specialisation is applyling high resolution spectroscopy to understand stellar nucleosynthesis and Galactic evolution. He was a post doctral fellow (1997-1999) at Valparaiso University and research fellow (1999-2003) at Univesirsity of Texas, Austin. He is currently professor at IIA, Bengaluru, and has been national coordinator for India's partcipation in one of the GSMTs (2008-2012) and later (2012-present) has been appointed as the programme director of India TMT programme and designated governor to the TMT project board of governors

Gopinathan Maheswar (IIA) : Work Package Manager TMT Coating Plant, India TMT management Advisory committee

T. S. Kumar(ARIES) : Member, India TMT management Advisory committee

Manoj Puravankara : SAC member

Prasanna Gajanan Deshmukh (IIA) : Engineer - C, Work Package Manager ITMT M1CS Actuators and Edge Sensors

Prasanna Deshmukh is Work Package Manager for India-TMT M1CS Actuators and Edge Sensors. He received his Ph.D. and M.Tech. degree in Astronomical Instrumentation from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) & the University of Calcutta in January 2021 & August 2013 respectively. He has completed his Ph.D. Thesis on the topic Modeling, Simulation, And Implementation Of Primary Mirror Control System For The Prototype Segmented Mirror Telescope. He has worked on ‘Development of Precision controller for TMT Actuator’ at ITCC laboratory of IIA for his master’s thesis. He also has a bachelor’s of engineering degree in Electronics and Telecommunication from Shivaji University, Kolhapur. He was a student of Integrated M.Tech-PhD in Astronomical Instrumentation at IIA, Bangalore, India between 2011 to 2017. Between Dec 2017 to May 2020 he was working as a Project Engineer at India - Thirty Meter Telescope Coordination Center at IIA, Bangalore, and from June 2020 he is working as an Engineer - C at IIA Bangalore. His interest lies in telescope control systems, active optics, control system modeling & simulations, astronomical instrumentation & astronomy outreach

Pravin A Chordia (IUCAA) : Work Package Manager M1CS Segment Controllers & Cables

Pravin is Graduate in Electronics Engineering from University of Pune.
He joined IUCAA in 1990 and working on various projects related Astronomical Instrumentation.
Primary work involves Designing, Testing, Optimizing and Implementing Detector Controllers.
Also involved in Telescope Maintenance, Mixed Signal PCB design, Electronic Component selection and Procurement.
Area of interest includes Mixed Signal circuit designing and Low level signal processing.
Pravin is a part of TMT India and working on M1CS SCC and WFOS project

Ramaprakash A. N. (IUCAA) : SAC Member, Associate Programme Director, Member, India TMT management Advisory committee(ITCC)

Sivarani Thirupathi (IIA) : SAC Member, Head Science & Instruments

Sivarani completed her PhD in 2000 from Indian Institute of Astrophysics on the studies of "A and F stars with circumstellar dust". Her primary research interests are chemical abundances of metal poor stars of the Galaxy and its satellites. Currently, she is a member of the TMT science advisory committee and also one of the convenors of the ISDT on "Stars and ISM". She is also deeply involved in the WFOS optical design phase, simulations of WFOS optical layout, distortion and modelling of the instrument flexure

Sriram S. (IIA) : Optics Engineer, Work Package Manager Segment Polishing

S.Sriram, Engineer (Optics) completed Master of Technology in 2000 from Anna University on Laser and Electro-Optical System. Joined Indian Institute of Astrophysics in 2000 and working on various instrumentation projects in the field of astronomy.
Area of expertise:
a) Optical design
b) Building Optical/Astronomical Instrumentation
c) Optical Metrology.
Working experience:
a) Design and building of fibre fed high resolution spectrographs
b) Design, integration, test and calibration of UV payload for astronomy.
c) Deeply involved in the WFOS optical design phase, simulations of WFOS optical layout, distortion and modelling of the instrument flexure

Surhud More (IUCAA) : SAC Member

Surhud More is an observational and theoretical cosmologist at the Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics at IUCAA. He completed his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (University of Heidelberg), for which he was awarded the Otto Hahn medal from the Max Planck Society. He has held the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago, and a distinguished postdoctoral fellowship at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU). He was a tenured faculty at Kavli IPMU until 2018, after which he joined IUCAA. Surhud was awarded the Marshak Lectureship by the American Physical Society in 2019. Surhud has been a member of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey previously, and is currently a member of the Subaru Hyper Suprime Cam Survey Collaboration, the LIGO collaboration,and the Rubin observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time project.

Sujit Punnadi (IUCAA) : Telescope Control System

Sujit holds a bachelor's degree in computer science and a masters in Industrial Mathematics with Computer Applications. Sujit joined IUCAA in 2009 and has led software design and development efforts related to Instrument Control, Data Acquisition, and Control and Monitoring on Linux platform. Additional responsibilities include lab IT procurement and administration. Sujit has interests in device driver development, middleware, parallel programming and kernel development on Linux platform. Sujit is part of TMT India Software group and is actively involved in engaging with software vendors on various software work packages

Former Members

Annapurni Subramaniam (IIA) : Observatory Software / Science

Devendra K Ojha (TIFR) : Member, India TMT management Advisory committee

Jeewan C. Pandey (ARIES) : SAC Member

Neeraj Gupta (IUCAA) : Work Package Manager Telescope Control System

Mahesh P.K. (IIA) : Hardware, Member, India TMT management Advisory committee

Raghunathan Srianand (IUCAA) : SAC Member / Science, Member, India TMT management Advisory committee

Shashi B. Pandey (ARIES) : Member, India TMT management Advisory committee (ITCC)

ITCC Staff

Ananthu C.M. (IIA) : Project Engineer I (Mechanical)


Ananthu C M, a graduate in Mechanical engineering from University of Calicut, joined India TMT Coordination Centre in November 2019. He holds the major responsibility of quality assurance and vendor management activities at ITCC.
Prior to this he was worked as QA/QC junior engineer at RIL, Jamnagar

Amirul Hasan (IIA) : Project Engineer - I (Optics)


Amirul Hasan, part of India Thirty Meter Telescope (ITMT) team as an Optical Engineer, He obtained his Bachelor Degree in Physics (Hons.) from Jai Prakash University, Chapra, India in 2012 and went to pursue his master’s degree in MSc(Tech) Photonics from National Institute of Technology, Warangal in 2013. His master’s thesis was about Design of Zoom Camera for Surveillance system at Bharat Electronics Limited, Machilipatnam. After completing his master, he joined Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam missile complex Hyderabad where his work focuses on various types of testing of thermal imager. Later he joined Prisms India where his work mainly focused on R&D of optical metrology.
He joined Indian institute of astrophysics, Bangalore in 2019 as an optical engineer and currently working on the Design and Analysis of high-resolution optical spectrograph for TMT and various subsystems like atmospheric dispersion corrector, beam compression and image slicers. He is working on designing an imager to replace the NIRC-II and developing calibration system for SCALES (third generation instrument) for Keck observatory in collaboration with University of California Santa Cruz. He is also involved in preliminary optical design of National large optical telescope (NLOT)

Ajin K. Prakash (IIA) : Project Engineer II (Mechanical)


Ajin is Mechanical Engineer with experience of about 8 years in the field of design engineering. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University (VTU). He started his professional career at IIA in 2014 as an intern under Prof. Jayant Murthy where he was part of a team working on small payloads for space and high altitude balloon experiments. In addition to this Ajin was involved in other projects such as Prototype Segmented Mirror Telescope (PSMT) and Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). Later Ajin worked as a mechanical engineer at a private company in Bangalore and Hyderabad where he worked on various industrial projects such as handling beam design, lifting hook design, gantry design, design of composite structures, and various support systems to carry heavy mechanical loads (>20 tonne). His main areas of expertise is optomechanical design, special purpose machine design, structural design and finite element analysis (FEM).
His interests are astronomical instrumentation, steel structures, composite structures, tensegrity structure design, welding technology, and astronomy. Currently Ajin is working as an engineer at I-TMT Scientific Instrumentation Group at IIA under Prof. Sivarani Thirupathi

Arun Kumar A (IIA) : Project Engineer II (Mechanical)


Arunkumar A is currently working as Project Engineer (Mechanical) in the Thirty meter Telescope(TMT) project here at Indian institute of Astrophysics (IIAP), Bangalore.
Prior to this, he was working as Assistant Manager of Production Planning and Control (PPC) department at Dynamatics Technologies Limited, an Aerospace company in Bangalore, where he started his career as Production Planning and Control Engineer working under the guidance of then Deputy General manager of PPC department.
He has a work experience of about 3.5 years with skill sets in field of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Maintaining Line of Balance (LOB), involved in major project like BELL 407 and BOEING P8 aircrafts with fabrication of parts starting from raw material, processing, heat treatment, other special process & addressing queries/clarifications from the teams.
He holds Bachelor of Engineering degree in mechanical engineering from Sapathagiri college of engineering, Karnataka, affiliated to Visvesvaraya technological university (VTU) and a Diploma Degree in Tool and Die making from Government Tool Room and Training Center (GTTC) Bangalore

Alikhan Basheer (IIA) : Project Engineer - II (Optics)


Alikhan Basheer is working under India TMT project as a Project Engineer-2 (Optics) since October 2020. He is basically an Opto-Mechanical Engineer having a background of Electronics & Communication, Optics and Mechanical engineering. He has 8+ years of experience in Design and Development, Finite Element Modeling and Analysis, Image Processing, Data Analysis, Large Optics Fabrication, and Optics Metrology. He received his Bachelors Degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, in 2012 and Masters Degree in Optical Engineering from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, Trivandrum, in 2015. His career at IIA started as an internship student in 2015 and later he held various positions such as Engineer Trainee, Project Engineer-1 and Project Engineer-2 under Inda-TMT project. He along with the India TMT mechanical team designed and developed various opto-mechanical tools and fixtures for India-TMT optics fabrication process such as Hexagonal Buyoff Station, Tool Cart, Blank Cart, Vacuum lifter Cart, Sink Fixture, Roundel Buyoff Station, Metrology Station etc. He received 6-months hands on training on Stressed Mirror Polishing Technology from Coherent, USA. This technology will be used to polish the 84 segments of TMT primary mirror which corresponds to one of the in-kind contributions from India TMT towards the TMT project. He is currently involved in the ITOFF facilitisation, TMT roundel production and management activities.

Basavaraju C. H. (IIA) : Admin Consultant


Basavaraju C.H. possesses Bachelor of Arts degree from Mysore University. He started his career in Kudremukh Iron Company Limited, (a Government of India Enterprises) and worked from 1978 to 1983 (5 years) and later joined Indian Space Research Organization/Department of Space and worked there from 1983 to 2012 ( 29 years). During his tenure in ISRO, he handled versatile assignments in the areas of Administration, Accounts, Purchase and Stores, Facility Management, Security Management, Vendors Management, Public Relations, etc. He underwent training programs in Management Executive Development Programme at some premier institutions. After superannuation from ISRO, joined India TMT Coordination Centre, IIA, Bangalore as Consultant, Administration on 10.9.2015. His present assignments are in the area of Purchase/Stores, Accounts and Administration relating to TMT work

Devika .K. Divakar (IIA) : Project Scientific Associate - II


Devika K Divakar is a Project Scientific Associate-II at India-TMT Coordinate Center with remarkable experience alongside the TMT science instrument team. She specializes in optical design analysis and end-to-end simulation of spectrographs. Her work is mainly focused on the optical designing, simulating and sensitivity analysis of various spectrographs for TMT - Wide Field Optical Spectrograph and High Resolution Optical Spectrograph. She is also actively involved in project management, instrument software development, instrument tolerance and data analysis. Her main research interests include astronomical spectroscopy and instrumentation, optical designing and simulation, stellar nucleosynthesis and chemical evolution of MilkyWay galaxy and its satellites.

Hari Prasath S (IIA) : Project Senior Associate-I (Technical)


S.Hari Prasath is Project Associate (Technical) for India TMT project. He holds the major responsibility of managing schedules, tracking, analyzing the earned value and reporting of all India TMT work packages and Hardware deliverables from vendors, since his joining from mid of April of 2015. He is also engaged in various other duties entrusted from time to time.
He has worked on Project Management and Engineering design departments for over three years. Previous assignments have included Diploma Engineer Trainee, Graduate Apprentice and as Contract Engineer in FLSmidth Pvt Ltd., Chennai, complete service provider for Cement and Minerals industries globally.
He has completed his Diploma in Mechanical Engineering (2008) from S.I.T, Trichy and Bachelor's degree in Mechanical engineering (2012) from M.A.M.C.E, Trichy.

Jeevan V (IIA) : Project Engineer I (Mechanical)



Jayakumar.P.S (IIA) : Project Engineer I (Mechanical)


Jayakumar P S is a Mechanical Engineering Graduate from Mar Athanasius College of Engineering(2013-17 batch), Kerala. He joined ITCC as an Engineer Trainee in 2018 and is presently working as a Project Engineer (Mechanical) with the Quality Assurance team at ITCC. His major responsibilities involve evaluating and monitoring of QA Processes at multiple Supplier facilities. He is currently involved with M1CS Actuator and M1S Segment Support Assembly (SSA) work packages at ITCC

Karthic Kumar (IIA) : Project Engineer II (Mechanical)



Kambhala Sudarsan (IIA) : Project Engineer I (Mechanical)


Sudharsan Yadav Kambhala has a graduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Rajeev Gandhi Memorial College of Engineering and Technology (RGMCET) under University of JNTUA in August 2017. He did a Diploma course in Mechanical Engineering prior to his bachelors from Govt. Polytechnic College, Rajampet. As a part of his diploma Sudharsan was trained in mechanical machine shop skills from Jyothi Yeses Anodising Anantapur.
His association with IIA began in 2017 when he joined as an intern with TMT. Currently he’s working as Project Engineer–I and is involved in design of subsystems for WFOS, HROS, MICS, SSA, SPG (Optics) and supporting the fixtures design.
His Hobbies are playing chess, cricket, cooking, biking & trekking

Nigam Vaishaly Samir (IIA) : Project Engineer I (Electronics)


Vaishaly is currently working for the India-Thirty Meter Telescope (I-TMT) which involves the process/prototype development as per the requirements, implementing Qualification procedures, and procurement under the Edge sensor and Actuator work package. She underwent remote training on the Electronics of Segment Mirror Polishing setup from Coherent, USA for Preventive maintenance at ITCC/IIA/ITOFF. She completed her graduation in Electronics Engineering from P.E.S College of Engineering, Aurangabad Maharashtra, qualified GATE, and joined Defense Research and Development Organization’s Regional Centre for Military Airworthiness (RCMA-Korwa). She worked for three years on various projects which involved Hardware and Software testing, Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V), Document verification, Defect investigation, etc. Later, she joined Central Manufacturing Technology Institute, Bangalore, and contributed to the development of the Second Line test rig for LRUs. Her interest lies in the areas of Design and development of control systems, testing, and Documentation

Pramod Panchal (IIA) :Project Engineer II (Optics)


Pramod Panchal did his Ph.D. from Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST). His Ph.D. thesis title is “Investigations on wavefront sensing for propagation characteristics of turbulence impacted light beams”. He worked as Senior Project Fellow in the IIST-ISRO project on “Laser Profilometry based on Holographic principle”. His areas of research include Optical Interferometry, Holography, Optical Profilometry and Adaptive Optics.

Raghavendra. T (IIA) : Project Purchase Asst. II


Graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belagavi Karnataka
2010-2018 - Worked as Assistant Manager (Projects) JSW Steel Limited, Bellary Karnataka for 8 Years in the Key areas like Design & Engineering( Rotary, Static & lifting equipments), Procurement & Sores, Erection & Commissioning of Heavy Mechanical equipments & Steel structures.
Qualified Internal ISO auditor (QMS,EMS & OHSAS)
Team leader for Quality circles (TQM, Poka Yoke & Kaizens), 5S Implementation in stores & Industrial safety committee.
Exemplary award winner for the work carried out in 2014 (Modification of Dust burner in Dust recycling system) & 2016 (In house development, Indigenisation of critical spares and there by reducing procurement cost)

Surojit Kumar Roy (IIA) : Project Junior Engineer


Surojit has a diploma's degree in mechanical engineering from Acharya Polytechnic, Bangalore, Karnataka, India. Surojit started his career in the automobile sector and worked for four months with Accropoly Metal Industries (P) Ltd, Jamshedpur. Later on, he moved to CSIR-National Metallurgical Laboratory at Jamshedpur and worked in Material Science and Technology department. Surojit joined the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore in April, 2012. Presently, he is working on the prototyping of the M1CS Actuator and M1 Segment Support Assembly (SSA) for the Thirty Meter Telescope Project

Post Doctoral Fellow

Sarang Shashikant Shah (IIA) : Post Doctoral Fellow (Science)



Project Trainees

Debanjan Mandal (IIA) : Project Trainee (Mechanical)


Debanjan Mandal completed his graduation in Mechanical Engineering from SRM University, Chennai on July 2020, later he completed Post-Graduation Diploma in Advanced Manufacturing Technology from CSIR-Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute, Durgapur on August 2021. He joined ITCC as a Mechanical Project Trainee for TMT project on October 2021. He is currently involved in coordination of manufacturing related activities in Work Package Actuator and Quality Inspection.

Mahesh D. Dalavi (IIA) : Project Trainee (Mechanical)


Mahesh D. Dalavi completed his graduation from the Government College of Engineering, Aurangabad, Maharashtra in 2020. He joined as a Project Trainee - Mechanical in India TMT Coordination Center (ITCC) in November 2021. Currently, he is a part of the quality assurance team of ITCC and is involved in various QA activities of the M1CS work package.

Sanjeev Kumar Jha (IIA) : Engineer Trainee (Opto-Mechanical)


Sanjeev Kumar Jha is working as an Engineer Trainee (Opto-Mechanical) for the Thirty Meter Telescope (India-TMT) project at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in Bangalore, India.
He obtained his M.Tech degree in Optical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Trivandrum, India in 2022 and his B.Tech degree in Mechanical Engineering from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam Technical University, Lucknow, India. He has cleared the GATE exam in both the years 2019 and 2020.
He completed his M.Tech project at Paras Defence and Space Technologies in Bangalore, India. The project focused on the "Design, Analysis, and Optimization of a Lens Mounting Technique for Cryogenic Applications".
His areas of interest include Opto-Mechanical Design, Optical Design, Metrology and Fabrication.
Currently, he is involved in Modelling and Simulation of Stressed Mirror Polishing Process for TMT Mirror Segments under the Segment Polishing Group (SPG).

Internship Students

• Snehalatha K: 2022
• Adithya Madiraju: 2022
• Vikash Gowda: 2021
• Rakshith Kumar Shetty: 2021
• Archana K.M.: MSc final year, 2014
• Chithaarth K.P.: B.E in Mechanical engineering, 2015
• Deepta Sundar Mishra: MTech final year, 2015
• Divyashree: B.Tech in Electronics, 2013
• Kambhala Sudharsan: B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, 2017
• Karthik A.B.: B.E in mechanics, 2014
• Kavitha Krishna Bhat: MTech final year, 2013
• Kavyashree: MTech final year, 2014
• Kedarnath PVR: B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, 2015
• Maharnab Bhattacharjee: B.S. Degree, 2013
• Shrishail Raut: B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering, 2015
• Sindhu Divakaran: MTech final year, 2016
• Sriram Natrajan: MTech final year, 2014
• Suraj Haldar: MTech final year, 2016
• Vedhashree: MSc final year, 2015
• Vinay Kumar: B.Tech in Electronics, 2013

International Science Development Team Members

• Amit Pathak (Tezpur University) : 2015
• Anjan Ananda Sen (JMI) : 2014
• Annapurni Subramaniam (IIA) : 2013
• Anupama G. C. (IIA) : 2013
• Bhaswati Mookerjea (TIFR) : 2015
• Das Mousumi (IIA) : 2014
• Das Subinoy (IIA) : 2015
• Devendra K. Ojha (TIFR) : 2013
• Gopakumar A. (TIFR) : 2015
• Goswami Aruna (IIA) : 2014
• Harinder P. Singh (University of Delhi) : 2015
• Hum Chand (ARIES) : 2015
• Indulekha K. (MGU) : 2015
• Kamath U. S. (IIA) : 2014
• Madhav K. Patil (SRTMU) : 2014
• Manjari Bagchi (TIFR) : 2014
• Manoj Puravankara (TIFR) : 2015
• Narasimha D. (TIFR) : 2015
• Pravabati Chingangbam (IIA) : 2015
• Preeti Kharb (IIA) : 2015
• Priya Hasan (MANUU) : 2014
• Puthiyaveettil Shalima (IIA) : 2014
• Raghunathan Srianand (IUCAA) : 2013
• Ranjan Gupta (IUCAA) : 2015
• Rupjyoti Gogoi (Tezpur University) : 2014
• Sami M. (JMI) : 2014
• Shashi B. Pandey (ARIES) : 2013
• Sivarani Thirupathi (IIA) : 2015
• Sudip Bhattacharyya (TIFR) : 2015
• Sujan K. Sengupta (IIA) : 2013
• Surajit Chattopadhyay (PCMT) : 2014
• Varun Bhalerao (IUCAA) : 2014