Speakers

Saibal Ray is Professor & Associate Director of the Centre for Cosmology, Astrophysics and Space Science (CCASS) at GLA University in Uttar Pradesh, India. He has published extensively in theoretical astrophysics, with over 220 papers, and he has taught and supervised research students for many years.

Samiha Sehgal is the Nation Support Co-ordinator at the Institute of Physics in Scotland. She recently completed her MSc in Particle and Nuclear Physics from The University of Edinburgh. Originally from India, Samiha feels strongly about making Physics more widely accessible, especially for women and under-represented communities.

Muhammad Hamza Waseem is pursuing a DPhil in Physics at the University of Oxford. His studies are funded by the Rhodes Trust and Magdalen College, Oxford. His current research revolves around quantum foundations, quantum science education, applied category theory and mathematical linguistics. During his undergraduate studies in electrical engineering at UET Lahore, Hamza helped develop the first lab for single photon quantum physics in Pakistan. He also co-authored a book 'Quantum Mechanics in the Single-Photon Laboratory' published by the Institute of Physics (IOP), UK. The book is now in its second edition.

Keen on public engagement with science, Hamza has helped organise the Lahore Science Mela, the biggest annual science festival in Pakistan. He co-founded Spectra—an online magazine aimed at training popular science writers in Pakistan. For science popularisation, Hamza has been awarded the 2021 Diana Award, a High Commendation at the 2021 SEPnet Public Engagement Awards, and 2024 MPLS Public Engagement with Research Impact Award.

At Oxford, Hamza teaches mathematics and physics at Mathematical Institute and Department of Computer Science. He has also taught as a Lecturer in Physics at Magdalen College. He is a Research Scientist at Cambridge Quantum and Research Fellow at Global Centre for Advanced Studies, Dublin. He can be contacted at hamza.waseem@physics.ox.ac.uk.

Ganapathy Baskaran: A condensed matter theorist and a collaborator of P.W. Anderson (Princeton), from 1984. I am a beneficiary of Indian

education: and of ICTP Trieste, Italy, where I met Anderson in the summer of 1983. Also had the pleasure and honor of knowing Prof Abdus Salam at ICTP, from 1976. Now, I share my time between IITMadras, Matscience, Chennai, India and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, at Waterloo, Canada.

I work on phenomenology driven theory of high temperature superconductors and strong electron correlation enabled novel phenomena in quantum materials. Life, biology and surprising quantum phenomena at warm wet conditions fascinate me.