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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Ashoka University
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TZID:Asia/Kolkata
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DTSTART:20250101T000000
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T110000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T123000
DTSTAMP:20260327T070548Z
CREATED:20260327T070055Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260327T070548Z
UID:91183-1775041200-1775046600@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Physics Seminar | Spin-current Modulated Ultrafast Spin Dynamics at Magnet/Nonmagnet Interfaces
DESCRIPTION:Abstract:  Spin-to-charge current conversion has opened up Pandora’s box to the scientific community by providing an energy-efficient solution to record\, store\, and process data. This is the essence of spintronics\, where magnetism complements electronics. The pure charge current has the power to modulate not only static or quasistatic magnetic states of the nanoscale magnetic materials\, but also ultrafast demagnetization and spin-wave dynamics that occur in the femtosecond and nanosecond time scales. To detect the modulation of demagnetization time\, precessional\nfrequency\, Gilbert damping etc.\, within a magnetic layer in the presence of adjacent nonmagnets with high spin-orbit coupling can be probed only via all-optical methods. State-of-the-art time-\nresolved magneto-optical Kerr effect magnetometry is exploited to study spin-torque driven ultrafast carrier dynamics in substrate/magnet (i.e.\, CoFeB\, CoGd etc.)/nonmagnet (i.e.\, W\, Ta\,\ngraphene etc.) heterostructures. Qualitative and quantitative demonstrations of the spin Hall effect and the spin pumping effect are presented\, which are considered key mechanisms governing the performance of modern spintronic devices. \nReference:\n1. Physical Review B 96 (5)\, 054414\, 2017\n2. Science Advances 5 (4)\, eaav7200\, 2019\n3. ACS Nano 2022\, 16\, 9620−9630\, 2022\n4. Materials Science and Engineering: B 287\, 116131\, 2023
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/physics-seminar-spincurrent-modulated-ultrafast-spin-dynamics-at-magnetnonmagnet-interfaces/
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T132000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T150000
DTSTAMP:20260329T234145Z
CREATED:20260329T234145Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260329T234145Z
UID:91232-1775049600-1775055600@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:1 April: History 3rd year thesis presentations
DESCRIPTION:Abir Das: Body Matters in the Arthaśāstra \nBody Matters in the Arthaśāstra reorients the study of the Arthaśāstra by foregrounding the body as a critical category for understanding the text’s political imagination. While existing historiography has focused on political economy and administration\, this thesis argues that the Arthaśāstra constructs two distinct types of bodies: those endowed with Ätmavattā\, exemplified by the vijigÄ«á¹£u (the ideal king)\, and those lacking these qualities. The first chapter analyses the king’s body as the locus of political authority\, showing how governance is tied to the cultivation\, discipline\, and protection of the ruler’s body. It also challenges the conventional division between domestic (tantra) and foreign (āvāpa) spheres by demonstrating a shared logic of bodily vulnerability. The second chapter theorises female subjects as “bodies without selves\,” whose reproductive capacities are appropriated through regimes of regulation governing menstruation\, sexuality\, and labour\, thereby sustaining both patriarchal kinship and state extraction. By reading the text as an integrated whole\, this thesis argues that the body is fundamental to understanding the Arthaśāstra\, reshaping how we interpret ancient Indian political thought. \n  \nAnusmita Bhattacharyya: A Terracotta Menagerie: Exploring the depiction of animals in the terracotta carvings on the temples of Bishnupur during the Malla Dynasty (694-1802 CE) \nThe thesis explores the themes around animals and birds through a range of terracotta carvings in three terracotta temples\, namely the Shyam Rai temple\, the Jor Bangla temple and the Madan Mohan temple in Bishnupur (located in present-day West Bengal)\, the capital of the Malla kingdom\, in the seventeenth century. They highlight the complex\, layered Vaishnava devotional landscape and syncretic religious ethos prevalent among the Malla rulers of the time. The temples are not only expressions of a revolutionary artistic tradition characteristic of Bengal\, but they also capture the negotiation of human–animal boundaries\, the use of animal imagery to articulate devotional and mythic landscapes\, and the embedding of local devotional practices within wider global historical contexts. Besides this amalgamation of Vaishnava iconography\, the temples carry animal iconography that embodies the spaces of diverse landscapes— tigers on the hunt\, elephants caparisoned for war\, parrots in a domestic household. These carvings became the visual language through which the Malla rulers and their artisans articulated Bishnupur’s place in the pre-modern world. Through the imagery of forest creatures such as boars and elephants\, courtly hunting scenes with elephants\, Mughal-style warriors on horseback\, Persianate hybrids of simurgh and serpentine dragons\, along with Vaishnava narratives\, these seventeenth-century artisans brought together Bengal’s sacred geography through the artistic expressions in these temples in Bishnupur and the echoes of the Indo-Persianate cosmopolis in the seventeenth century. \n  \nChinmayi Manoj: Return to a Native Land? Hierarchy and Belongingness Amongst the Jewish Community in Kerala \nThis thesis has attempted to examine the idea of a “homeland” that existed among the Jewish community of Kerala before the spread of Zionism as a popular ideology within the community. The main argument of the thesis is that feelings of longing for a homeland did exist among the community before Zionism\, and this was expressed through a sense of ‘diaspora’ among the community. The strand that the thesis will focus on is the idea of origin. The idea of diaspora for Jewish people is based on a biblical notion. The thesis explores some of the culturally and socially specific ways through which this idea was expressed among the Jewish community in Kerala. \nNithika Bopanna: Interspecies and Ecological Interactions in the Seventeenth-Century Chronicle Tarikh-i Firishta \nThis thesis examines the nature of the interactions between humans and the environment in the seventeenth-century chronicle Tarikh-i Firishta. It is divided into two parts: first\, the study of interactions with nonhuman organisms\, including animals and disease; and second\, the analysis of environmental conditions such as terrain\, climate\, and rivers\, as represented in contexts of political and military activity. The argument derived from this is that the environment in Tarikh-i Firishta functions not just as a background setting but also an active force shaping political authority\, warfare\, and social processes. By analysing interspecies and ecological interactions within a primarily political and military narrative\, it demonstrates how nonhumans and environmental conditions are embedded in the articulation of power and governance. Through a close reading of a translated historical text\, this study reveals how human ideological understandings of the environment are implicitly constructed\, while also reflecting on how the nature of the source material shapes these representations. It contributes to the human-environment interactions in the field of environmental history by showing how ecological perspectives can be derived from sources not explicitly concerned with the environment.
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/1-april-history-3rd-year-thesis-presentations/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T133000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T144500
DTSTAMP:20260324T220733Z
CREATED:20260324T220733Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260324T220733Z
UID:91026-1775050200-1775054700@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Physics Colloquium | Surrounded by Darkness - The Invisible Dark Matter Halo of the Milky Way
DESCRIPTION:Dear All\, \nThe Department of Physics invites you to a colloquium on Surrounded by Darkness – The Invisible Dark Matter Halo of the Milky Way. \nAbstract: An `invisible’ form of matter\, aptly named `Dark Matter’\, is five times more abundant than the visible (or baryonic) matter in our Universe.  This dark matter is ubiquitous. In fact\, our home in the Universe\, the Milky Way galaxy\, resides within a dark matter halo\, though we cannot see it. The visible Milky Way — its stars\, gas\, and dust — represents only a small fraction of the total mass of our Galaxy. The rest is in the form of dark matter\, which reveals itself only through gravity.  In the last few years\, the GAIA satellite has produced exceptional maps of the Milky Way visible matter\, giving us the best ever view of our own galaxy. These visible matter tracers can probe the distribution and motion of the underlying invisible component\,  shedding light on the nature of the Milky Way dark matter halo and\, ultimately\, the very nature of dark matter.  In this seminar\, I will show how the  Milky Way thus serves as a laboratory for studying dark matter from within\, providing important clues about one of the biggest mysteries in modern physics. \nAbout the Speaker: Prof. Subhabrata (Subha) Majumdar is a Full Professor (Scientist H) in the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)\, Mumbai. His research lies at the intersection of theoretical and observational cosmology\, with a focus on dark energy\, dark matter\, and the physics of baryons within halos and across cosmic scales. His interests also extend to astroparticle physics and the study of the Milky Way and dwarf galaxies. Over the years\, he has held several prominent academic positions\, including visiting professorships at ORIGINS\, Munich (2022)\, ETH Zurich (2014)\, and LMU/MPA Munich (2010)\, and a joint faculty position at ICTS\, Bangalore (2012–2015). Prof. Majumdar has received numerous prestigious honours\, including the Kavli Frontier Fellowship (2013)\, the Simon Fellowship at ICTP\, Trieste (2015–2021)\, and the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 Fellowship at the University of Oxford (2001). \nWe look forward to your active participation. \n 
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/physics-colloquium-surrounded-by-darkness-the-invisible-dark-matter-halo-of-the-milky-way/
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T133000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T144500
DTSTAMP:20260331T061313Z
CREATED:20260331T061313Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260331T061313Z
UID:91293-1775050200-1775054700@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Computer Science Seminar | Timed Automata and How to Learn Them
DESCRIPTION:Dear All\, \nThe Department of Computer Science invites you to a seminar on "Timed Automata and How to Learn Them" \nZoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/98106130931?pwd=82IYpMhDN3urjrv0Sw7yTbh86XMZaZ.1 \nAbstract: Automata are fundamental models in verification\, testing\, and synthesis\, but constructing them manually is often difficult and error-prone. Automata learning is an automated synthesis technique that aims at synthesizing automata models\, that are correct-by-construction\, from queries or observations. It has been successfully applied to a wide range of applications such as verification of network protocols\, reverse engineering legacy systems etc. Many systems\, however\, depend not only on the order of events but also on the timing of their occurrences. Timed automata capture this behaviour by extending finite automata with clocks. However\, learning them is challenging due to the continuous nature of time. In this talk\, I will present our works on passive and active learning of timed languages recognizable by Event-Recording Automata (ERA)\, a subclass of Timed Automata. In the passive learning framework\, we provide a state-merging algorithm to construct an ERA from positive and negative data. In the active setting\, we propose a novel algorithm to be able to learn an ERA with the minimum number of states that accepts the target language.  \nThis is based on joint work with Sayan Mukherjee and Jean-François Raskin. \nAbout the Speaker: Anirban Majumdar is currently Prof. R. Narasimhan Postdoctoral Fellow in the Computer Science Department at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research\, working with Shibashis Guha. Earlier he was a post-doctoral researcher in the Verification group at Université Libre de Bruxelles\, working with Jean-François Raskin. He obtained his PhD from Université Paris-Saclay under the supervision of Patricia Bouyer-Decitre and Nathalie Bertrand. His research interests include automata learning\, controller synthesis for reactive systems\, and synthesis under uncertainty. \nWe look forward to your active participation.
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/computer-science-seminar-timed-automata-and-how-to-learn-them/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T134000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Kolkata:20260401T145000
DTSTAMP:20260331T031102Z
CREATED:20260331T031102Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260331T031102Z
UID:91275-1775050800-1775055000@www.ashoka.edu.in
SUMMARY:Economics Department Weekly Seminar | Catherine van der List | 1st April 2026 | 1:40 PM
DESCRIPTION:Title: Children of Neighborhood Renewal: Long-Run Effects of a Revitalization Program \nAbstract: Between 2001 and 2011\, England implemented the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund (NRF)\, an ambitious neighborhood revitalization program targeting the most deprived areas of the country. Using a sharp Regression Discontinuity Design that exploits the cutoff-based program eligibility rule\, we study the long-term impact of the NRF on children who grew up in targeted areas. Results show that\, compared to the control group who just missed out on program eligibility\, the children of neighborhood renewal enjoyed 15-percent higher earnings at age 25. Further results show that stronger attachment to the labor market and better job prospects explain these results\, with effects persisting through age 35. \n 
URL:https://www.ashoka.edu.in/event/economics-department-weekly-seminar-catherine-van-der-list-1st-april-2026-140-pm/
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