I am an Astrophysics Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Physics interested in space-based astronomical instrumentation and high-energy astrophysics. I study the structure of neutron stars and black holes using a technique called X-ray Polarimetry which uses data from the space telescope IXPE (occasionally alongside other X-ray observatories like NICER and NuSTAR) to explore the geometry of dead stars by studying how light from these sources bends around local magnetic fields and bounces off of material falling onto these objects through accretion. I also help operate MIT’s Soft X-ray Polarimetry Beamline, an 18-meter long vacuum chamber that produces X-ray light, to test the gratings, detectors, and optics for future X-ray telescopes such as the REDSoX Polarimeter—a NASA sounding-rocket mission studying the relativistic jet of a supermassive black hole.
I earned my BA from Columbia University, New York in 2022 with a major in Astrophysics and a concentration in Mathematics as a Science Research Fellow and co-Principal Investigator of the CARMEn Mission on the International Space Station. I am also a former Mitchell Scholar and Matthew Isakowitz Fellow earning my MSc in Space Science & Technology at University College Dublin, Ireland in 2023.
Swati 