I am Shikha Rathi, a PhD scholar at the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. I am working under the guidance of Prof. Lalita Sharma. My research involves the calculation of atomic structure parameters like Energy levels, transition rates and lifetimes for complex atomic species. The ions and the atoms we focus on are mostly relevant for plasma modeling and diagnosis. I also perform calculations of hyperfine structure, Lande gJ and isotope shift factors for highly charged ions and heavy atoms. I am further interested in expanding my knowledge to the astrophysical phenomena which require precise atomic data for spectral analysis.
Earlier, I worked with Prof. Sunil Krishna to study the radiation belts of the Earth under different solar storm conditions. We used ARASE satellite data to study the phenomena.
About my previous studies: I have achieved my Master’s and Bachelor’s degree from Delhi University.
In my masters, I was in the Observational Astronomy Lab of Prof H.P Singh. This lab is allotted to only top students who perform excellently well in academics during the first year of masters. Under the guidance of Prof H.P Singh, I had done a research project on Variable Stars.
I had also worked in the Advanced Electronics Lab of the Department of Physics and Astrophysics, Delhi University. Under the guidance of Dr Vinay Gupta, Dr Nivedita Deo, Dr K. Sreenivas, Dr R P Tandon, I had completed my master’s project on “on Smart Traffic Control System”.
To aggrandize my physics knowledge, I had worked (part-time) with Chegg India as an Advance Physics Subject Matter expert in 2017 – till now and was one of the top 100 experts of Advance Physics in 2018.
I am well acquainted with programming languages like FORTRAN, Python, C, C++ and other software packages like MATLAB, Xmgrace, Jupyter Notebook, and SPEDAS.
I have studied Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning so as to indulge my numerical analysis and modelling ability with the knowledge of physics.
Apart from my fascination with Physics, I like sketching, being physically active, and spending my spare time playing foosball, table tennis and pool. I’m gregarious, and I like hanging out with friends and travelling.
I look forward to working with people in the field of Atomic Physics.