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Harish Vedantham

I am a staff astronomer at ASTRON and a visiting assistant professor of astronomy (zero-hour appointment) at the University of Groningen. My current research focusses heavily on two areas: (i) studying plasma and magnetic fields in the coronae of stars and magnetospheres of brown dwarfs and exoplanets, and stars, brown dwarfs and (ii) radio observations of the 21-cm line from the early Universe when the first stars and galaxies were born. I have always maintained a broad interest and have published on fast radio bursts, gravitational lensing, and dense clumps of gas in the local interstellar medium, circum-galactic medium, generation and propagation of electromagnetic radiation.

I often use data from novel radio telescope such as LOFAR in my work. I am a core member of the LOFAR Epoch of Reionization project. I am also a core member of the LOFAR Two Metre Sky Survey collaboration and co-lead its Galactic Science working group.

Before my astronomy days, I was an electrical engineer specializing in the design of radars for topographic mapping. I built a 35-GHz interferometric radar to map the topography of snow-covered land as part of my Master's thesis at MIRSL.

Outside of work, I love badminton, hiking, backpacking and brewing beer, which have all been happily exchanged for playing with my children these days.