Bhagya M. Subrayan(she/her/hers)

I am a postdoc at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, working with Prof. David J. Sand. My research follows core-collapse supernovae from their first hours to thousands of days after explosion: I use the James Webb Space Telescope to watch cold dust condense in supernova ejecta, chase the earliest light from very young nearby transients, and search for the electromagnetic counterparts of gravitational-wave events with Arizona's telescopes.

I completed my Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy at Purdue University with Dr. Danny Milisavljevic, where I built statistical inference machinery to pull explosion parameters out of sparse all-sky survey light curves, and helped develop REFITT, an AI system that recommends which transients to follow up, and when. Along the way I led the discovery paper on AT 2021lwx, better known as “Scary Barbie,” one of the most energetic non-quasar optical transients ever recorded, now belonging to the class called Extreme Nuclear Transients (ENTs).

Beyond my academic work, I’m passionate about programming, data science , and the application of machine learning in astronomy. I’m also a strong advocate for women and underrepresented groups in STEM , and I take pride in participating in leadership roles that promote diversity and inclusion in science. I spent three years with Purdue's Women in Science Program and served as president of the Physics Graduate Student Association, and I now mentor undergraduate and graduate students on projects of their own.

Feel free to explore my work or reach out if you’re interested in collaborating!

I am a South Indian from Kerala, and a lot of what grounds me is unglamorous and boring: outdoor runs, volleyball, lifting, creating video logs and cooking for people. I am passionate traveler and travel whenever the schedule lets me. I believe traveling is a sole privilege and I am grateful for it.

I also enjoy the science-communication side of this job more than I expected to. Explaining an extra ordinarily luminous event on NPR's 1A to an audience with no astronomy background was one of the more useful things I have done for my own thinking. More of that on the outreach page.