Dr. Kaustubh Rajwade

Dr. Kaustubh Rajwade

Principal Research Software Engineer - Physics

In my role as the principal RSE, I work on developing high-performance algorithms using modern C++ and CUDA, and I will be building an embedded RSE team within the Department of Physics over the next few years. I currently work on the pulsar search software team, developing the real-time fast-transient and pulsar-detection pipeline for the SKAO telescope, the largest radio telescope under construction in South Africa and Australia. I finished my PhD in Physics in 2017 from West Virginia University, building high-performance pipelines to search for millisecond-duration astrophysical radio bursts. I worked as a post-doctoral associate at the University of Manchester, where I led the development of the real-time data processing pipeline for the MeerTRAP project to discover fast astrophysical transients until 2021 and then worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the Radio Astronomy Institute of the Netherlands (ASTRON). There, I built LORDS, a software stack for fast dedispersion of radio images of the sky with the LOFAR telescope.
As an astronomer, I specialize in studies of highly magnetized neutron stars. I use a global array of radio/ X-ray telescopes (MeerKAT, LOFAR, NICER) to unravel the emission physics of these objects. I am also interested in the origins of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs); cosmological radio flashes of as yet unknown origin, and I use state-of-the-art radio telescopes to unveil their true nature. You can find all my publications here.