Gagan B. Mohanty

Prof. Gagan B. Mohanty is the chairperson of the Department of High Energy Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. His research theme revolves around the fundamental questions “What are the basic building blocks of matter, and starting from there how did one end up at the present state of universe?”. To address these questions, he has been working at the energy frontier of the CMS experiment at CERN in Switzerland, as well as the luminosity frontier of the Belle II experiment at KEK in Japan. Among the many accolades he has received, the most notable include being ranked among the top 10 researchers in India based on publications and citation metric, as well being awarded with the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Besides his research, he is deeply committed to teaching and mentoring Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows.

Prof. Vaibhav S. Prabhudesai is at the Department of Nuclear and Atomic Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai. He obtained his Ph.D. from TIFR Mumbai, followed by postdoctoral work at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. His research interests include electron-molecule collisions in gas and condensed phase, molecular dynamics, low-energy electron-induced chemistry, and ion and electron momentum spectroscopy. He has published several papers in international peer-reviewed journals and delivered more than 50 invited talks. Dr. Prabhudesai was the vice-president of the Indian Society of Atomic and Molecular Physics (ISAMP) and has been a member of several national and international advisory committees.