Darshan Kakkad

Darshan Kakkad is an STScI fellow working with the COS/HST team and divides his time to continue his research. His research of interest relates to galaxy formation and evolution to include exploring how the presence of supermassive black holes, aka “Active Galactic Nuclei” affects the evolution process. He has extensively used integral field spectroscopy (IFS: MUSE/VLT, SINFONI/VLT, WiFeS/ANU) and sub-mm spectroscopy (ALMA) to investigate the presence of high velocity winds and characterize ISM conditions in low and high redshift galaxies.  He is an active member of SUPER, BASS and S7 surveys and the HARMONI/ELT team.

Dr. Kakkad obtained his PhD from Ludwig Maximilian University in 2017 under the supervision of Dr. Vincenzo Mainieri, Dr. Paolo Padovani, and Prof. Dr. Andreas Burkert. Thereafter, he moved to ESO-Chile and University of Oxford as a part of ESO postdoctoral fellowship where he worked with MUSE/VLT and HARMONI/ELT teams respectively.

Education:

PhD in Astronomy, Ludwig Maximilian University, Germany
M. Sc in Physics, Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, India
B. Sc. (Hons) in Physics, University of Delhi, India

Science Interests:

• Ionized and molecular gas kinemetrics in low-redshift and high-redshift galaxies
• Resolved stellar populations
• Stellar ages and star formation histories
• Physical conditions in the Interstellar medium conditions (e.g., electron density, temperature)
• Integral Field Spectroscopy
• Sky-substraction techniques

Research Topics: Supermassive Black Holes; High-Redshift Galaxies; Galaxy Formation and Evolution; AGN and Quasars; Interstellar Medium; Resolved Stellar Populations; Instrumentation

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-2603-2639