I am an Astrophysics Ph.D. candidate in the MIT Department of Physics interested in high-energy astrophysics and space-based astronomical instrumentation. I study the extreme environments around black holes and neutron stars 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 observe 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 