Dr. Ayngaran Thavanesan

Hi I am Ayngaran! I am a cosmologist and theoretical physicist, working on quantum gravity to understand the beginning of our universe and its ultimate fate. I am part of the Eelam Tamil diaspora in England, who fled the genocide committed by the Sri Lankan state against my Eelam Tamil ethnic group, and I am proud to be the first of my ethnic group to pursue the field of high-energy physics and/or cosmology. I am hoping my journey makes others from my ethnic group, as well as those from less common backgrounds, feel less alone, whether they are from underrepresented backgrounds in academia or trailblazers in other fields!

I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Scientist (aka postdoc) at EPFL (Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne), as well as a scientific collaborator at CERN. Prior to this, I did a brief stint (July-August 2025) as a postdoc at the Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist, working on cosmology and quantum gravity. I was also lucky enough to be selected for a 6-month KITP Graduate Fellowship at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics - University of California, Santa Barbara in Spring 2025.

I completed my Bachelor’s degree at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy, before completing a Master’s in theoretical physics and astrophysics at Queen Mary University of London with Timothy Clifton. I was then a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics. I was advised by Aron Wall and was lucky enough to be funded by an Institute of Physics (IOP) Bell Burnell Graduate scholarship, a Cavendish Trust scholarship, as well as an honorary (declined financial award of scholarship) David and Susan Hibbitt scholarship of Jesus College, Cambridge.

I’m broadly interested in quantum gravity and theoretical cosmology, particularly as applied to the Wavefunction of the Universe, though I have additional interests beyond cosmology in a range of fields.

Here you can find more information about my research and outreach activities by clicking on the buttons above. You can also follow me through Instagram: @ayngs_2508 and X: @AGNPhysics. Feel free to email me with any questions!