Sanjeev Dhurandhar

"In my student and postdoc days, electronics was my hobby. I built rectifiers, power supplies, preamps and also repaired the amplifiers of the hi-fi sound system that I had bought. In the late seventies, hi-fi systems were very popular. Some of the experience I had with electronics helped provide insights in my scientific work. For example, some of the transfer functions encountered in LIGO problems can be modeled as LCR circuits."

Sanjeev Dhurandhar is an Emeritus Professor at the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune, India. He is one of the pioneers of Gravitational Wave (GW) astronomy in India and has worked extensively on applying advanced mathematical and statistical techniques in developing algorithms for GW searches and detector characterization since the late 1980s. His contributions include introduction of a differential geometric approach to GW data analysis, and the stationary phase approximation to compute the Fourier transform of the chirp. In his free time, he enjoys playing old Bollywood melodies (especially those from Raj Kapoor films) and Marathi theater music (Natya Sangeet) on the piano accordion and reed organ.