Dhruba Dutta Chowdhury, born and raised in Kolkata, obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from, respectively, the University of Calcutta and Presidency University (formerly Presidency College), before moving to the United States to pursue his Ph.D. in astrophysics at Yale University.

 

In his doctoral research, Chowdhury worked on fuzzy dark matter (FDM), a recently popular alternative to the standard cold dark matter model, and made novel predictions for the dynamics of star clusters, black holes, and galaxies in an FDM universe. He also worked on ultra-diffuse galaxies and specifically on modeling the dynamics of the star cluster system in the recently discovered dark-matter-deficient, ultra-diffuse galaxy NGC 1052-DF2. His work constrained the matter distribution in the central region of this galaxy, demonstrating that whatever small amount of dark matter the galaxy might have, it must be distributed according to a shallow central profile.

 

After completing his Ph.D. in the summer of 2022, Chowdhury will be joining the Racah Institute of Physics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem as a postdoctoral fellow, hosted by Prof. Avishai Dekel and Dr Nir Mandelker h. He will study the formation and evolution of star clusters in a cosmological context, focusing especially on explaining the properties of the star cluster populations seen in ultradiffuse galaxies. He will also embark upon new research on the nature of dark matter, attempting to constrain it using the structure and dynamics of star clusters, stellar streams, black holes, and galaxies.