University of Groningen
Large-scale 21-cm Cosmology with LOFAR and AARTFAAC
Gehlot, Bharat Kumar
IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below.
Document Version
Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record
Publication date: 2019
Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database
Citation for published version (APA):
Gehlot, B. K. (2019). Large-scale 21-cm Cosmology with LOFAR and AARTFAAC. University of Groningen.
Copyright
Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons).
Take-down policy
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.
Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum.
Acknowledgments 177
Acknowledgments
Four years ago, I arrived in the Netherlands to start my PhD at the Kapteyn Institute. These four years in Groningen have been really amazing (apart from the weather, duh!). I would like to thank all my friends and colleagues at Kapteyn Institute and in the city of Groningen who made my stay in the Netherlands very enjoyable and memorable.
First and foremost, I would like to thank my PhD adviser, Prof. Leon Koop-mans, who gave me a chance to work with him and without his immense support and encouragement, this thesis would not have materialised. Leon, it is impossible for me to express my heartfelt gratitude towards you in a single paragraph. Thank you so much for providing wonderful guidance and support over the last four years and at the same time keeping me in the right direc-tion whenever I digressed. Just by observing you, I am learning to become an independent researcher as well as getting effective at time management. I have always enjoyed all those amazing discussions and conversations (whether academic or non-academic) we had during our weekly meetings at Kapteyn or over a beer in town. I hope we will continue to work together as collaborators in the future.
I am very grateful to Prof. Ralph Wijers for agreeing to be my co-promotor letting me work on the AARTFAAC data. Ralph, thank you so much for the fruitful discussions we had about AARTFAAC.
It has been a great pleasure to be a part of the most amazing research team, the LOFAR-EoR family. Thanks to all the members of the LOFAR-EoR research team for providing an excellent research atmosphere. All the discussions we had during our meetings have helped me develop scientific intuition. André,
178 Acknowledgments Maaijke, Sarod, I cannot thank you enough for helping me with small or big, sometimes even silly questions I had about the LOFAR data processing (which I still keep asking). Florent, big thanks to you for helping with the GPR and power spectra analysis of the LOFAR-LBA and ACE data and I hope that we continue to collaborate on exciting research projects in future. Vibor, I would like to thank you for teaching me the RM-synthesis analysis I did for my first paper. Harish, a special thanks to you for providing insights into understanding several results related to LOFAR-LBA and ACE data analysis. Marta, Millad, Modhurita, I have always enjoyed our conversations during coffee or happy hours. Robin, I gonna miss our conversations about games, comics, tv-series and sometimes about science as well :P and I owe you big thanks for proof-reading the Dutch summary of my thesis.
Saleem, being a TA for your Statistical Signal Processing course has been one of the best decisions I made during my PhD. Thanks to your unique teaching style, the concepts I grasped during the course helped me understand several signal processing aspects in my PhD project. Thanks for agreeing to be a referee and providing recommendations for my Postdoc applications.
Pandey Ji, I do not know how to thank you enough for helping me over all these years, not just related to work but also with small issues during my stay in Groningen. Thanks for looking after me for all these years. You and Sweta Ji also helped me immensely with the visa applications of my parents so they can visit me at the time of my PhD defence. I would also like to thank Ajinkya, Khan, Abhik, Simon and Hyoyin for being wonderful colleagues and friends. Moving to the extended EoR-family, Sambit, Hannah, your nice company made the conferences in Israel and Croatia the most memorable conferences. Hannah, I look forward to seeing you in the US of A!
My sincere thanks to the members of AARTFAAC team for their help in AARTFAAC EoR and Cosmic Dawn project I carried out during my PhD. Aleksander, Mark, I am grateful to both of you for spending a significant amount of time to help me with AARTFAAC data acquisition and for numer-ous discussions and conversations we had on Hipchat and Slack, which helped me learn a lot about AARTFAAC.
I would like to extend my gratitude to Prof. Philippe Zarka, Prof. Ravi Subrahmanyan and Prof. Marc Verheijen for being in my thesis assessment committee. I also thank Prof. Jasjeet Singh Bagla and Prof. Jayaram Chen-galur for introducing me to the field of radio astronomy and 21-cm cosmology, which helped me embark on this exciting path.
During my PhD, I ended up in room no. 258 at the Kapteyn Institute. I would like to thank all my office mates over the last four years: Jaco, Dorota,
Acknowledgments 179 Avanti, Tirna, and Arun. I always enjoyed our conversations on diverse topics such as food, culture, travelling, academics etc. although it used to be a rare event that all of us were present in the office on same days. I wish you guys all the best with your future endeavours.
My stay in Groningen would not have been the same without all the friends and colleagues. Saikat, Enrico, Sampath, it has been amazing to have you guys as great friends over all these years. I enjoyed all the activities (whether recre-ational or non-recrerecre-ational) we did together, especially the NOVA fall school! I want to thank all my Indian and international friends, Evandro, Katya, Olmo, Elaheh, Seyda, Daniel, Sarrvesh, Smaran, Teymoor, Punya, Suma, Giulio, Anastasia, Cristiana (& Davide), Alessandro, Crescenzo, Mustafa, Aku, Kris-tiina (& Karlis), Sara, Arijit, and Madhushankar for providing an awesome time in Groningen. I apologise if I have missed someone in this list.
I express my appreciation to the secretaries and the computer group at the Kapteyn Institute for their support, without them the institute would cease to function so smoothly. Thanks to all the members of Kapteyn Institute for making it a lively and pleasant workplace.
Nikki, it has been a great pleasure to have you as a friend. I am really grateful to you for helping me with the translation of the summary of my thesis and agreeing to be one of my paranymphs. I hope you and Musty will enjoy your new life in Amsterdam and I wish you all the best for your future.
To all my friends whom I have known since my undergrads, Amit, Anurag, Mohit, KD, Mayank, Jugal, Deepu, Prateek, Nishant, Sandeep, Hitesh, and Indru thank you for keeping in touch with me, even though we are oceans away from each other.
Pooja, although I have known you for the last six years, we have been to-gether for 2.5 years now. I can’t even imagine finishing my PhD if you were not standing beside me all this time. During the last year of my PhD, you supported me by making sure I don’t get distracted from the goal and your help in proof-reading the paper drafts I wrote. I am grateful for every moment we share together!
Last but not least, I wish to thank my family. In fact, I cannot begin to express my gratitude towards my parents, for all the moral and practical support they have provided for many, many years. They sacrificed a good lifestyle to make sure that I kept pursuing my dreams, without having any kind of pressure mentally or financially. It is only because of their efforts that I am here pursuing my dreams and flying like a bird. I would also like to thank my siblings for taking care of my parents while I am not around.
