Ms Manasvee Saraf

“It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

– Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter

ABOUT ME

Hello! I am Manasvee Saraf, a third-year PhD student, jointly-funded by ICRAR–UWA and CSIRO.  

I first arrived in Australia in March of 2021, amid the pandemic! I am originally from Mumbai, India where I completed my schooling before moving to London, UK for my undergraduate degree.

My research interests are in the areas of extragalactic astrophysics and cosmology and my skills and experience are central to analysing observational data and outreach. I am particularly interested in topics such as the expansion history of the universe, morphology, distribution and evolution of galaxies and quality control of galaxian surveys.

My working hours are 10am to 6pm AWST.

RESEARCH FOCUS

The goal of my PhD is to study the evolution of galaxies by studying the radio continuum and neutral hydrogen (HI) properties of galaxies in the Norma Cluster and those detected with the full WALLABY survey. I study the effects of the environment on the evolution properties of the galaxies. In particular, how the presence of several large radio galaxies affects the detection and presence of cold gas within the Norma cluster. 

I have investigated the HI properties the Norma Cluster’s brightest cluster galaxy using mosaicked observations from the ATCA. I am now analysing the pilot Norma data from the ASKAP WALLABY survey.  I will eventually work with data from the full WALLABY survey.

My research is supervised by Ivy Wong and Luca Cortese. I am a part of the SU1 (Local Universe) group at ICRAR and an active member of ASTRO 3D and the ASA.

PROJECT 1

Click here to read the paper!

Click here to go to the video summary of my first project.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

In 2020, I graduated with First Class Honours from University College London (UCL) with a Master in Science, Astrophysics degree. My Masters project, under supervision of Benjamin Joachimi at UCL, was to construct the luminosity function of over a million galaxies from the KiDS galactic survey, the code for which can be found on my GitHub.

During my four years in London, I have also gained research experience in the fields of planetary science and stellar astrophysics, working on making and analysing photometric and spectrographic observations. I am proficient in Python and Java with some experience in IDL and C.

I was granted the Royal Astronomical Society’s Undergraduate Summer Bursary for a summer project, supervised by Raman Prinja, that focused on constraining the nature of small-scale clumping in a B-star’s wind.

I have also attended the Particle and Astroparticle physics Summer School (GraSPA 2019) under the recommendation of Amelie Saintonge.

OUTREACH

I was a tutor for 3 years with the ORBYTS Programme, through which I taught programming in Python to 20 high-school students per year, covering code necessary to extract physical quantities from observations of exoplanetary transits. This citizen science project led to a publication in the year 2020.

PUBLICATIONS

2022:

Saraf et al.,”HI absorption associated with Norma’s brightest cluster galaxy“. Published in MNRAS March 2023.

2020:

Edwards, Changeat, Yip, Tsiaras, Taylor, Akhtar, AlDaghir, Bhattarai, Bhudia, Cha- pagai, Huang, Kabir, Khag, Khaliq, Khatri, Kneth, Kothari, Najmudin, Panchalingam, Patel, Premachandran, Qayyum, Rana, Shaikh, Syed, Theti, Zaidani, Saraf et al., “Original Research by Young Twinkle Students (ORBYTS): Ephemeris Refinement of Transiting Exoplanets”. Published in MNRAS July 2021.

INTERESTS OUTSIDE ACADEMIA

I have been in several leadership roles, including founding and running the UCL Astrophysics Society and being the Astrophysics Student Academic Representative at UCL for three consecutive years. I have a passion for improving the student/workplace experience.

I am proficient at producing videos, a hobby that I pursued as a career before my undergraduate degree. I aim to encourage participation in the scientific community through my videos one day.

I am an avid traveller since I enjoy interacting with people from different cultures and documenting my experiences. I have visited 19 countries and I plan to explore more.

I am fluent in English and Hindi and I have intermediate experience with French.

Lastly, I believe yoga is great nutrition to your mind, body and soul, cooking and crafts  are the best ways to unwind and dressing-up is a form of expression.

FIND ME ON

• GitHub
•  LinkedIn
• Twitter: @ManasveeSaraf
• Instagram: @tooeasyspace.