Reshmi Mukherjee is an Indian-American astrophysicist known for her research on gamma-ray astronomy and blazars, involving work based on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory,[1][2] VERITAS,[3] Energetic Gamma Ray Experiment Telescope (EGRET), and Cherenkov Telescope Array collaborations.[4] She is Helen Goodhart Altschul Professor of Physics & Astronomy at Barnard College.[5]
Mukherjee writes that she was inspired to go into physics by her father, who encouraged her in it despite his own lack of a college education.[6] She graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics from Presidency College, at the time part of the University of Calcutta, in 1986, and earned a master's degree there in 1989. She went to Columbia University for graduate study, under the supervision of Elena Aprile, and completed her Ph.D. in physics at Columbia in 1993.[7]
After postdoctoral research with the EGRET project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, and a visiting position at McGill University, she joined the Barnard faculty in 1997.[5][7]
Mukherjee's teaching includes introducing undergraduates to research by bringing them on visits to the ground-based observatories she works with[8] and by including them in the analysis of data from the observatories.[9] As a faculty member at Barnard, she also teaches physics at Columbia University.[10]
Mukherjee was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2017, after a nomination from the APS Division of Astrophysics, "for advancing multifrequency strategies for the identification of gamma-ray sources and contributing significant leadership in blazar studies between the GeV and TeV gamma-ray bands".[11]
