Prof. Nikhil Mukund is an experimental gravitational-wave physicist working on precision interferometry, detector commissioning, and intelligent instrumentation for current and future gravitational-wave observatories. Before joining IUCAA in 2026, he was a Research Scientist at the MIT LIGO Laboratory, where he worked on laser-beam control and the transfer of embedded-AI techniques from tabletop optical systems to LIGO-scale subsystems. He was also a Junior Investigator at the NSF Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions (IAIFI), focusing on agentic-AI workflows for experimental physics and scientific discovery. Earlier, he worked as a Junior Scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics/AEI Hannover, contributing to the commissioning and characterization of the GEO600 gravitational-wave detector. His doctoral work at IUCAA involved work at LIGO Livingston and Caltech, focusing on seismic, gravity-gradient, and transient noise in gravitational-wave detectors, along with adaptive noise-cancellation and related control strategies. At IUCAA, his research is centered on LIGO-India instrumentation and commissioning, with emphasis on interferometer sensing and control, optical coating thermal-noise measurements, and gravity-gradient studies. In parallel, he uses model-based systems engineering and reinforcement learning to make complex experimental systems more adaptive, diagnosable, and controllable.