Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

The University of Texas at Austin

Software Engineer

San Francisco, California, United States

I contribute to the open-source astronomy software, KStars. Some of my major contributions have included a backend to calculate close-conjunctions of planets, an innovative tool that helps users navigate through the sky, the design of an observation planner, efficient loading of a 100 million star catalog, significant performance improvements, and many other unique features.

Volunteer Open Source Developer

My research concerns mathematical and experimental aspects of Brownian motion. In the first half of my graduate career, I contributed to building high-precision experiments that succeeded in measuring Brownian motion of a particle in liquid with unprecedented spatial and temporal resolution. In the latter half of my career, I have contributed towards developing better theoretical frameworks to model these experiments.

Graduate Student Researcher

As a research intern in the Department of Theoretical Physics, I investigated the symmetries of the Navier-Stokes equations.

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research

Visiting Student Research Program Student

During the summers of 2009 -- 2013, 2015 -- 2016, I have mentored students working on KStars as part of the Google Summer of Code program.

Akarsh Simha