Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India (CESSI)

The Center of Excellence in Space Sciences India (CESSI) is a multi-institutional Center of Excellence hosted by the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata and has been established through funding from the Ministry of Educ ablished through funding from the Ministry of Education, Government of India. CESSI aims to explore the Sun’s activity, generate the understanding necessary for space weather forecasting, hunt for gravitational waves, support national space science initiatives, participate in international capacity building activities and pursue public-private partnerships in space science research. The Center will take advantage of high-performance computing facilities, cloud computing and the high-speed National Knowledge Network grid to achieve its goals. CESSI faculty are drawn from IISER Kolkata, IISER Pune, Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (Pune), Indian Institute of Astrophysics (Bangalore), Udaipur Solar Observatory-Physical Research Laboratory (Udaipur), Indian Institute of Technology Indore, Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (Nainital) and the Indian Space Research Organization (Bangalore), Raman Research Institute (Bangalore) have wide-ranging interests in the astrophysical space sciences, and have the experience of handling international and national space science projects. Since its inception CESSI has already contributed to major developments in astrophysics and space sciences. Notably, CESSI personnel are associated with the Aditya-L1 mission - India's first space mission to study the Sun. CESSI personnel contributed to the first direct detection of astrophysical gravitational waves from a binary Black Hole merger system and are involved with the LIGO-India mega project which aims to deploy a third gravitational wave detector in India to supplement the observations from the two detectors in the United States of America. CESSI affiliated personnel have also been involved with the planning and installation of India's most advanced ground-based solar telescope - the Multi-application solar telescope at Udaipur Solar Observatory (Physical Research Laboratory) which has been operating since 2015. CESSI faculty are also playing important roles in national and international capacity building through their roles in working groups and committees at the International Astronomical Union (IAU), Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP), Astronomical Society of India (ASI) and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).