Spandan Dash

Research, CV, and Articles

Click here for my full CV

Research Projects in chronological order:

  1. PhD work on characterizing exoplanet atmospheres using high resolution spectroscopy in the group of Dr. Matteo Brogi at University of Warwick.
  2. Post MS research work with Dr. Liton Majundar of National Institute of Science Education and Research, India on linking protoplanetary disc chemistry with gas giant exoplanet atmospheres in order to discern formation locations. This involves working with disequilibrium chemistry code VULCAN and radiative transfer code for spectrum generator petitRADTRANS. A paper based on this project has been published in ApJ and is linked below.
  3. Second Master thesis project which I did with Dr. Yamila Miguel of Leiden Observatory. I built a toy population synthesis model from scratch in Python to investigate if planetary systems around low mass stars like the TRAPPIST-1 system could be more common. A paper based on this has now been accepted in MNRAS and will be linked in the Papers section when it becomes available.
  4. First Masters thesis project with Dr. Daniel Harsono, Dr. Michiel Hogerheijde and Dr. Ewine van Dishoeck on imaging a young protoplanetary disk. Also found evidence for grain growth to mm-cm levels in the outer disk-inner envelope interface.
  5. Did a review of several catalogues such as HabCat, Exocat-I, CELESTA and the Breakthrough Listen Initiative as part of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science Young Scientist Program to produce an outline for how a catalogue for SETI targets could be prepared. This was done in collaboration with Dr. Jacob Haqq-Misra and Dr. Eddie Schwieterman.
  6. X-ray emission from Kepler 63, Kepler 210 and Wasp 19; Project conducted under Lalitha Sairam at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore. This is a part of my Bachelor’s thesis where I calculate the mass loss from these exoplanet candidates and in general examine the question of habitability. A paper based on this has been published (see below).
  7. The viability of emergence of life near hydrothermal vents on the Hadean Earth: A review cum proposal: Project done under Dr. Ramananda Chakrabarti at the Centre for Earth Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India
  8. A General Account of Cosmology and Particle Physics; Project done under Dr. Debashish Majumdar at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
  9. Optical Systems and EOTS; Project with Dr. B. K. Das, Scientist-G in the Electro-optronics department at the Defence Research and Development Organization, Chandipur, Odisha, India

Papers:

  1. Paper introducing my high resolution cross correlation analysis pipeline (Upamana) and its application on 2 nights of CARMENES transmission data to place constraints on water vapour abundance and cloud deck pressure level in the atmosphere of the warm sub-Neptune GJ 3470b, arxiv link
  2. Paper on connecting exoplanet atmosphere spectroscopy to formation locations, arXiv link
  3. Paper on planet formation, arXiv link
  4. Paper on exoplanet atmospheric loss, arXiv link
  1. My summary of a paper that formulated a scheme of shared sovereignty to form a Martian government. This is intended for people at the high school level.
  2. My thoughts on the condition of India in 2036. This was done as part of the Governance course which was an essential part of the Humanities component at IISc.