Indumathi D. is an Indian

particle physicist Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standa ...

and a professor at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMSc),

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. She has been an active member of the

Indian Neutrino Observatory India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is a particle physics research project under construction to primarily study atmospheric neutrinos in a deep cave under INO Peak near Theni, Tamil Nadu, India. This project is notable in that it is antici ...

(INO) project since its inception.

Early life and education

Indumathi D. grew up in Chennai. Her father was a mechanical engineer, whose work inspired curiosity in her at a young age. Indumathi did her masters in Physics from the Madras Christian College, Chennai. Even though she was more passionate about playing Cricket, an injury led her to pursue a career in Physics. Indumathi D. obtained her

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

from IMSc in particle physics, where she worked on the spin structure of the photon. Her doctoral advisor was M.V.N. Murthy. As a student, she also wrote a paper on the supernova event

SN1987A SN 1987A was a type II supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. It occurred approximately from Earth and was the closest observed supernova since Kepler's Supernova. 1987A's light reached Earth on Febr ...

. Following her postdoctoral appointments at

Physical Research Laboratory The Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) is a National Research Institute for space and allied sciences, supported mainly by Department of Space, Government of India. This research laboratory has ongoing research programmes in astronomy and astrop ...

(PRL),

Ahmedabad Ahmedabad ( ; Gujarati: Amdavad ) is the most populous city in the Indian state of Gujarat. It is the administrative headquarters of the Ahmedabad district and the seat of the Gujarat High Court. Ahmedabad's population of 5,570,585 (per t ...

, the

University of Dortmund TU Dortmund University (german: Technische Universität Dortmund) is a technical university in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany with over 35,000 students, and over 6,000 staff including 300 professors, offering around 80 Bachelor's and ...

in Germany, and then a brief stay at the

Indian Institute of Science The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is a public, deemed, research university for higher education and research in science, engineering, design, and management. It is located in Bengaluru, in the Indian state of Karnataka. The institute wa ...

Bengaluru Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

, she was appointed a faculty member at

Harish Chandra Research Institute The Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) is an institution dedicated to research in mathematics and theoretical physics, located in Allahabad (officially Prayagraj), Uttar Pradesh in India. Established in 1975, HRI offers masters and doctora ...

Allahabad Allahabad (), officially known as Prayagraj, also known as Ilahabad, is a metropolis in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.The other five cities were: Agra, Kanpur (Cawnpore), Lucknow, Meerut, and Varanasi (Benares). It is the administrat ...

. She returned to IMSc in 1998.

Research

Indumathi’s primary area of research is high energy physics phenomenology. Her research interests include work on atmospheric and solar neutrinos, nucleon and nuclear structure functions, inclusive hadroproduction at colliders and QED at finite temperature. She has authored several research papers on these topics. Along with other Indian scientists, Indumathi D. has been a proponent of

(INO) which is a project to build the first underground observatory to study atmospheric neutrinos in India. She has been the outreach coordinator and one of the spokespersons for the INO collaboration. She also coordinated a subgroup working on designing INO’s proposed main detector. Indumathi D. has written articles about the feasibility, status and physical possibilities of the INO detectors.

Personal life

Indumathi D. is married to a computer scientist and they have two daughters, both of whom are adopted. She has pointed to additional domestic chores as being a reason for the attrition rate of women in science, a dynamic she said is absent in her family.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Indumathi D. Year of birth missing (living people) Living people 21st-century Indian physicists Indian women physicists