Chayan Mondal

I am currently working as an Assistant Professor at the S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata, India. I pursued my PhD at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore under the supervision of Prof. Annapurni Subramaniam. In my PhD thesis, I studied the nature of recent star formation and young star-forming clumps in nearby irregular and spiral galaxies using multi-wavelength observations. I extensively used UV observations from the Ultra-Violet Imaging Telescope onboard India's first space observatory AstroSat in these studies. For my postdoctoral research, I moved to the Inter-University Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, India. As a postdoc at IUCAA, I worked in collaboration with Prof Kanak Saha and his group. I have been exploring different aspects of galaxy deep fields using multi-wavelength photometric and spectroscopic observations. Primarily, we are using the FUV and NUV imaging of the AstroSat/UVIT to produce deep UV images of some selected HST deep fields. The two primary fields that we have been working on are AstroSat UV Deep Field South (AUDFs) and north (AUDFn) which respectively cover the HST GOODS-S and GOODS-N fields. I am leading the research on the AUDFn field with an inclination to understand:

1. The evolution of dust in galaxies with cosmic time,

2. Do different galaxies at different times follow the same attenuation law?

3. The nature of dusty star-forming galaxies at higher redshift.

4. Lyman continuum leaking galaxies at intermediate redshifts.

To know more about my recent work on AUDFn, check these recent publications: Mondal et al. 2023a, Mondal et al. 2023b, Mondal & Saha 2024, Mondal et al. 2025

I moved to the  Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA), Taipei, Taiwan with the ASIAA Distinguished Post Doctoral Fellowship. At ASIAA, I worked in collaboration with the ASIAA Dusty galaxy group to explore more about the nature and evolution of interstellar dust in galaxies. Currently, I am investigating emissions from the Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon (PAH) dust molecules using the JWST MIRI observations. The primary goal is to understand how energetic UV photons from young stars can regulate the heating or destruction of PAHs in galaxies. As an independent postdoc at ASIAA, I have also worked in collaboration with other researchers to explore galaxy evolution in clusters, formation of Population III stars, dusty sub-millimeter galaxies, etc.

I am also continuing my research on nearby galaxies to understand various aspects of star formation and galaxy evolution. Some of the key questions that I try to explore are:

1. What regulates star formation in massive spiral and low-mass dwarf galaxies? 

2. How the external and internal environment can affect the evolution of a galaxy?

3. Can galaxies retain their structural component after going through a collision or merger?

Please contact me here :

• Email - cmondal@bose.res.in or mondalchayan1991@gmail.com

• Address - Department of Astrophysics and High Energy Physics,

S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences,

Block JD, Sector III, Salt Lake, Kolkata – 700106

My basic research interests are 

• Galaxy deep field

• Properties of high-redshift galaxies

• LyC leakers and reionisation

• Understanding star formation in nearby galaxies

• Demographics of star-forming regions in dwarf and spiral galaxies

• Dynamical evolution of galaxies