Biography

Ayngaran Thavanesan is a theoretical physics PhD candidate based at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics (DAMTP) supervised by Aron Wall. He has also been affiliated with the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge (KICC), which brings together cosmologists from DAMTP, Cavendish Astrophysics group and the Institute of Astronomy (IoA). Ayngaran works with a variety of people, including David Stefanyszyn, Will Handley, Enrico Pajer and Daniel Baumann. Ayngaran’s research centres around cosmology and fundamental physics with the particular goal to understand the origin of the universe to gain insights into a potential theory of everything unifying the fundamental forces. His current research program is centred around understanding quantum gravity in de Sitter (dS) space through the dS wavefunction (or equivalently the cosmological correlators encoded therein) using technniques from holography (i.e. dS/CFT) and cosmological bootstrapping, to make predictions about observables in the night sky today, such as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). In 2021 Ayngaran was awarded the Institute of Physics (IOP) Bell Burnell Graduate scholarship and the David and Susan Hibbitt scholarship of Jesus College, Cambridge for his PhD studies at Cambridge.

Although he was born and raised in South London, Ayngaran’s Tamil parents came to England as refugees from Sri Lanka not long before. His atypical background is akin to that of Faraday’s, as he is the first from his low-income family to have any academic qualifications. Despite these difficult circumstances, Ayngaran went on to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy and a Master’s degree in Queen Mary University of London with Timothy Clifton, before spending a year in Oxford moving back to Cambridge to complete his PhD. He hopes that this will demonstrate to people like him that one’s past and circumstances can be inconsequential of one’s future and will always be indebted to the likes of Cathie Clarke and Christopher Reynolds as well as various other amazing staff including Susan Hatley at Cambridge’s IoA for their endless support and hospitality during his pre-doctoral studies.

Ayngaran maintains various interests beyond physics, including fitness and the science behind it. He is a comptetitive 1st team Cambridge Blue badminton and football player, and has interests in tech startups including his own NightLYF. As a natural consequence of coming from an underrepresented background, he is a strong equality and diversity advocate, and is involved in various equality and diversity initiatives, including the founding of the non-profit organisation UniArk. He is also enthusiastic to share his passion for science with the general public, and has given a number of science outreach talks available on Happs and YouTube.