From Cosmic Dreams to Endless Possibilities
- Wits University
Dr Moumita Aich, the new Head of the Wits Anglo American Digital Dome, which officially opened in November 2024, was inspired to reach for the stars from an early age. As a young child in her hometown of Kolkata, India, she often sat with her father on the terrace of their home, stargazing and becoming increasingly hungry to find out as much as possible about astronomy and cosmology.
Dr Moumita Aich
“Kolkata used to be far less polluted, and one could see quite a bit in the night sky. There was not as much light or atmospheric pollution as there is now. I used to love observing astronomical events like eclipses or meteor showers,” she recalls.
Although both her parents were bankers, they too were interested in astronomy. The young Moumita wanted to pursue her interest in the Cosmos, and they encouraged her to follow her dreams.
She went on to become an astrophysicist, first obtaining a BSc in Physics from Presidency College, Kolkata, followed by an MSc in Physics, which included astronomy, from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. In 2012, she earned her PhD in cosmology at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, India.
In 2012, Aich was offered a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. She continued there as a research scientist and a contractual senior lecturer. “This is where I started teaching undergraduate, Honours, and Master’s courses. I enjoyed this immensely. I had done some teaching during my PhD studies in Pune, but it was only with a handful of students”, she said.
‘At UKZN, there were many levels of students, and I discovered that not everyone has the same learning styles. Some students learn better by listening, some by writing it all down, and some derive more benefit from demonstrations.”
She has continued to teach at Wits. “One needs to continuously improve your teaching skills so that one can pass on the enthusiasm and zest for learning about the cosmos to the next generation. I fervently believe it is important to encourage young people to pursue STEM subjects”, said Aich.
Before Aich was appointed as the Head of the Wits Anglo American Digital Dome last year, she was a sessional lecturer at Wits University, teaching physics to undergraduate engineering students.
The Digital Dome supports multiple cross-disciplinary academic projects for teaching and research at the university, and very close to Aich’s heart is the Digital Dome’s function as a space for digital science exploration and discovery for data-intensive disciplines.
Aich is passionate about theoretical and observational cosmology, and she has a particular interest in neutral hydrogen intensity mapping, which observes emissions from neutral hydrogen to map the universe in 3-D.