The Indian Institute of Technology Bombay is organizing an Institute Colloquium on January 6, 2025. 
The details of the Colloquium are provided below:

Title: "The Dynamic Universe"

Speaker: Prof. S. R. Kulkarni, George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science (Caltech), California Institute of Technology           

About the Speaker:
S. R. Kulkarni is the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy at the California Institute of Technology. He served as Executive Officer for Astronomy (1997-2000) and Director of Caltech Optical Observatories for the period 2006-2018. He was recognized by Cornell University with an AD White Professor-at-Large appointment. Prof. Kulkarni received an honorary doctorate from the Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He is the Chair of the Physical Sciences panel of the Infosys Science Foundation. Prof. Kulkarni obtained his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, and his PhD from UC Berkeley. He served a brief period as a postdoc at UC Berkeley and Caltech before joining the faculty rank at Caltech in 1987. Prof. Kulkarni's primary interests are the study of compact objects (neutron stars and gamma-ray bursts) and cosmic explosions. He is keenly interested in developing or refining astronomical methodologies. He is responsible for a large number of astrophysical breakthroughs including the discovery of cold stars called brown dwarfs, the discovery of millisecond pulsars when their existence was considered unlikely, establishing the gamma ray bursts are extragalactic in nature, etc. His awards include NSF's Alan T. Waterman Prize of the NSF, a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, a Presidential Young Investigator award from the NSF, the Helen B. Warner award of the American Astronomical Society, the Janksy Prize of Associated Universities, Inc, the Dan David Prize and the Shaw Prize. Kulkarni is a fellow or member of the following learned societies: the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the Royal Society of London, the US National Academy of Sciences, Indian Academy of Sciences and the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He has published more than 600 refereed papers, including 85 papers in Nature. He has an h-index of 125.
 

Speaker's webpage:
https://sites.astro.caltech.edu/~srk/

Abstract:
Every second, a supernova is exploding somewhere in the universe. Astronomers cannot see all of them, but the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), a robotic camera based at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, enables scientists to capture thousands of such explosions every year, shedding new light on the volatile cosmos. In this talk, Shri Kulkarni, ZTF’s principal investigator and the George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science, will discuss the history and development of ZTF, a public-private partnership aimed at the systematic exploration of the optical night sky. Using an extremely wide field of view camera and a super-sensitive 0.6 Gigapixel CCD camera, ZTF scans the entire Northern sky every two days, discovering objects that erupt or vary in brightness, such as supernovae, stars being swallowed by black holes, planets being engulfed by the parent stars, comets, and asteroids. Kulkarni will share some of the phenomena this cutting-edge instrument has revealed in its first years of operation and discuss how astro-informatics (machine learning, AI) is powering an unprecedented new era of studying the dynamic night sky.