Thushara Pillai

Biography:

Thushara Pillai is an Indian astronomer and astrophysicist who works as a senior research scientist at MIT Haystack Observatory and Boston University’s Institute for Astrophysical Research.  Molecular clouds, high-mass star formation, magnetic fields, astrochemistry, and the Galactic Centre have all piqued her curiosity. Pillai was the first astronomer to take pictures of magnetic fields reorienting close to regions of star formation, and she is well-known for her work that sought to comprehend star formation by observing magnetised interstellar clouds.

P. Gopalakrishna Pillai and K. S. Shyamala Kumar welcomed Pillai into the world on June 20, 1980, in Kerala, India. Pillai’s mother worked as a teacher at KV Pattom, a government day school where she graduated in the 1997 Class XII Batch. From a young age, Pillai was pushed to study physics and higher education by her parents and instructors.

Pillai completed her BSc in physics at Government Women’s College in Thiruvananthapuram. After that, she studied for a master’s degree in physics at IIT Madras. One summer, she had the chance to work on an astronomy project at the National Centre for Radio Astronomy in Pune, which sparked her interest in astrophysics and astronomy. She earned her doctorate in astronomy from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Germany.