Hey, I'm Kiran and I am currently a PhD student at the Sun, Stars, and Exoplanets research group at the University of Birmingham, supervised by Annelies Mortier. I run a lot, play cricket, love football, and make the saxophone sound like a kazoo.

About me

Overview

In September 2025, I began my PhD at the University of Birmingham where I am working on ABORAS (A dual-Beam pOlarimetric Robotic Aperture for the Sun). This will serve as a dedicated Solar input for the HARPS3 instrument which will be installed on the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope in La Palma. ABORAS will help to improve our understanding of stellar variability, track the long-term stability of HARPS3, and serve as a benchmark for the detection of Earth-sized exoplanets around sunlike stars.

I graduated from the University of Sheffield with a Master's degree in Physics and Astronomy in July 2024. In 2023, I worked as a support astronomer at the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING) in La Palma. From 2024 - 25 I worked as a planetarium presenter for Immersive Experiences, where I travelled across the UK delivering a variety of presentations to a diverse range of audiences.

Undergraduate work

In my third and fourth years, my researched focused mainly on a type of interacting binary star called cataclysmic variables (CVs). My third year research involved taking photometric observations of the CV V1315 Aquilae with the 0.5-m pt5m telescope in La Palma. The lightcurve of V1315 Aquilae was analysed to determine the inclination and radius of the accretion disc which surrounds the primary white dwarf star. I also worked on a detector aimed at measuring miniscule tremors with frequencies associated with Parkinson's disease.

After the third year, I spent a year working as a support astronomer for the ING at the Observatorio de Roque de los Muchachos in La Palma. In this role, I was responsible for training visiting observers to use the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope, as well as performing service observations and setting up its two instruments. Towards the end of my time at the ING I performed my own observations with the Isaac Newton Telescope, which I worked on in my fourth year for my masters project.

My fourth year research project involved using spectroscopic data of a CV to determine the masses of its component stars. These mass measurements were then used to test the predictions of the standard evolutionary model of CVs.