Samir Dhurde with Mauna Kea in the background

Short Bio

Samir Dhurde is in-charge of the popular outreach programme - SciPOP , at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune, India. He trained as a Radio Astronomer during his Masters' degree in Physics. He works professionally towards developing and using methods and activities to make Science and astronomy learning fun. Over the last decade he has been in many Education and Outreach advisory groups of organisations such as the ASI, TMT, LIGO-India, ISRO, IAU etc., putting in efforts to design large-scale educational programmes and resources in India and abroad. He has been awarded the national level Zubin Kembhavi award for outreach by the ASI for his work. He loves to travel across his vast and beautiful country to inspire children, encourage amateur astronomers to contribute to Science and to share Astronomy knowledge with his people.

Why Outreach?

Like all humans I am excited by the Beauty, Mystery and Grandeur that Astronomy brings to us. Outreach helps widely share this exhilaration and the sense of oneness with Nature. I want to inspire and enable every fellow being to apply our current knowledge and instruments to uncover the Universe! - Samir Dhurde

Long Bio

Samir Dhurde is in-charge of the popular outreach programme - SciPOP , at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA) in Pune, India. He has a Master's degree in Physics from the University of Pune. He trained as a Radio Astronomer and has used the GMRT for his scientific work.

He has loved appreciating and applying scientific method to everything around him since his childhood, which was spent in Durgapur, West Bengal. A dark playground and his binoculars used to be his observatory then. These led him to follow a career path to study astronomy in Pune, Maharashtra. In 2005, after assisting Arvind Gupta ji with his Science Toys project, he shifted to actively working in the field of public outreach for his favourite subject. He has continued working towards developing and using, very simple as well as very technical methods, to make Science and Astronomy learning fun.

Over the last decade he has also been in many Education and Outreach advisory groups of organisations such as the ASI, TMT, LIGO-India, ISRO etc., putting in efforts to design large-scale educational programmes and resources in India and abroad. He has been awarded the national level Zubin Kembhavi award for outreach by the ASI for his work. His work and experience has also been recognised internationally, him being given an associate membership of the International Astronomical Union in 2018.

During this period, he has had the good fortune of working with great and popular scientists like Prof. Yash Pal, Prof. Govind Swaroop and Prof. Jayant V. Narlikar. Their foresight and humility, among other things, are his main inspriation. He now simply wishes to keep travelling (maybe on his motorcycle, with his telescope) across his vast and beautiful country, to inspire children, encourage amateur astronomers to contribute to Science and to share Astronomy knowledge with his people.