Hi! I am Anik (he/him), a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Astronomy (IoA) and at Jesus College at the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

My research focuses on galaxy formation and evolution and weak gravitational lensing cosmology. I work towards bridging theory and observations, specializing in the development, and analyses of practical, theoretically tractable higher-order weak lensing statistics (beyond traditional 2-point correlations) as well as in the inference of physical properties of the millions of galaxies imaged in weak gravitational lensing datasets.

I was born and raised in the town of Durgapur in West Bengal, India. After graduating from high school in 2014, I moved to Bremen, Germany to pursue a BSc in Physics. During my undergraduate studies, I interned at the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology, Aachen. I was also the recipient of the DAAD RISE Worldwide scholarship for two consecutive years which allowed me to pursue research internships in Astronomy at St. Andrews and Tenerife which started my research journey in Astrophysics. After finishing my undergraduate studies in Bremen, I hence relocated to Munich in 2017 to pursue an MSc in Astrophysics. During the time I spent in Munich, I had the wonderful opportunities to work part-time as a software developer at the Scientific Computing group of the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum (MLZ) and then as a research and teaching assistant in the Gravitational Lensing group at the University Observatory of LMU Munich. In 2024, I completed my PhD in Physics at LMU where I was advised by Stella Seitz and Ralf Bender. After my PhD, I moved to Cambridge in November 2024 to start working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. I refer the reader to my Google Scholar profile for a list of publications that I am involved in or my LinkedIn page for my CV.

Besides exploring the nature of physical reality through my research, I love poetry (recitation mainly; haven’t tried my hand at writing), am a passionate supporter of Arsenal FC and I love walking! Since January 2025, I started tracking the distance I have covered on foot (including everyday walks to the office, supermarkets, in and around the city, on holidays, over walking pilgrimages etc.). Sharing some milestones as per my distance tracking app (I will keep updating this every now and then):

mid-July 2025 : 2000 kms

Through such everyday rambling, I wish to walk the overall circumference of our planet (~40,075 kms) and beyond, in the years to come.