Science Circle Lecture - India and Germany in the International Science Arena: FAIR Accelerator

Senior Professor & Raja Ramanna Fellow, Bose Institute

Sibaji Raha is a Physicist, specialising in High Energy Particle and Nuclear Physics, Astrophysics, Astroparticle Physics, Cosmology as well as a multitude of areas related to the Global Change scenario. He was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1954 and had his early education in the city, culminating in a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics (1st Class Honours) from Presidency College. He had his postgraduate training in Physics in the USA, obtaining a Doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. After several years of research and teaching in Germany and France, he returned to India to join the faculty of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics in Kolkata in 1985; he moved to Bose Institute in 1991 where he has been since. He served as the Director of Bose Institute during 2006 – 2016 as also the Director of S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata during 2014 – 2016. Over the years, he has also held numerous concurrent visiting professorships at a number of leading universities and research laboratories all over the world, including USA, France, Japan, Italy, Brazil and other countries. After retirement from active service as Senior Professor in 2018, he continues to be associated with Bose Institute as a full-time researcher. He presently holds, since August 2019, the Chair of Raja Ramanna Fellow of the Department of Atomic Energy, Government of India, at Bose Institute.

He created the National Centre for Astroparticle Physics and Space Science at Darjeeling and Kolkata, which has attained an enviable international status and reputation within a very short time. He is the Chairman of the Joint Scientific Council of the international Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) and the German Helmholtz Institute for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Darmstadt, Germany since 2016 through international peer-evaluation.
He has authored over 300 scientific papers in leading international journals, authored/edited 6 books and also written extensively in non-technical publications on various issues. His exposure to science education, teaching and research in many countries across the globe has instilled in him an abiding interest in the history of science and society. His commitment to science education and outreach takes him to all corners of the world for interactions with the general people.

Chair of the Bureau of FAIR Collaborations (BFC) and Professor, Heidelberg University

Norbert Herrmannhas been serving as Professor of Physics at Heidelberg University since 1998.  Prior to this,  he was a Staff scientist at GSI, Darmstadt, Germany, where he also completed his PhD. Between 1987 and 1989,  he was Postdoctoral Fellow andvisitng research assistant professor at SUNY, Stony Brook, USA. Since 2017, he is the Spokesperson of the CBM – collaboration, FAIR, Darmstadt and a Member of the STAR – collaboration, Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA. He is also the current Spokesperson of the FOPI collaboration, GSI.

Some of his other recent roles have been as Dean of Studies at Physics Department, Heidelberg University (2014-16), Project Leader within EU Program Hadron Physics 2 (2009 – 2012), Divisional associate editor of Physical Review Letters (2008 – 2012)
, and Coordinator of INTAS project „Prototype development for the high rate CBM TOF detector” with NIPNE Bucharest, INR Moskau and IHEP Protvino (2006 – 2009), among others.