Inspirations from Scientists of Manipur : Dr. Satyendra Thoudam
Downloadable Book Extract – Serial No : 13

Research Institute Of Science & Technology (RIST) *

Dr. Satyendra Thoudam

Experience of an astrophysicist
Dr. Satyendra Thoudam
Associate Professor, Department of Physics,
Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi
E-mail: [email protected]

A short biography

I was born on 1st March 1976, and my permanent residence is at Khurai Thoudam Leikai, Imphal East, Manipur. I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Physics, Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, UAE. My research field is Astrophysics and Astro-particle Physics, both theory and experiment.

My main focus is to understand those phenomena happening in the Universe at extreme energies by studying high-energy particles coming from outer space such as cosmic rays, high-energy gamma rays and astrophysical neutrinos. I am currently an active member of the international collaborations that are involved with the LOFAR, SKA and KM3NeT experiments. In the past, I was a member of the TACTIC and MACE telescopes collaboration in India.

My primary education and childhood

I did my primary education at Don Bosco School, Chingmeirong (Imphal) until Class 8, and later completed Class 10 from Tiny Tots’ Unique School, Imphal. During my high school, I used to prepare well all the subjects to get a good score overall, but it was during Class 9 and 10 that I started to develop a strong interest in physics and mathematics, in particular physics as I mostly like subjects that involves deeper understanding and reasoning, and that drives more curiosity. During Class 10, I often used to read more advanced level physics books particularly in optics, electricity and magnetism.

During my childhood, I was always fascinated with topics related to the cosmos. It was during mid-1980s, when I was about 8-9 years old (if I remember well), I learned about the news of India sending their first astronaut into space. At that time, there were no internet, and television was very rare. In a big locality (leikai), only one or two families used to have television. Only radio and newspapers were the main source of information which as a child hardly paid attention to.

During those years, India and Soviet Union (now Russia) had a strong cooperation in science and technology, and there was one soviet science magazine (I don’t remember the name exactly) which was quite popular, and people used to subscribe to it regularly through post. I still remember seeing pictures of Indian astronauts conducting training along with their Russian colleagues for the space flight.

The magazine described details of their training sessions. For me, this whole event later turned out to be one main factor that drove my fascination to learn more about objects up there in the sky. Now, we all know that manned mission into space involves more of engineering rather than science. Nevertheless, such events always make a big impact on the society, especially the kids.

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