Voyage Through the Cosmos Lecture Series
SCHEDULE
Mon - Fri : 5 PM - 8 PM
Sat - Sun : 10 AM - 1:30 PM
Day 1
March 16, 2026
Monday
Time
5 - 6 pm | IST
Inauguration and Guests Talks
Guest of Honor:
Annapurni Subramaniam,
Director, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru
Guest of Honor:
Dipankar Banerjee,
Vice-Chancellor, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), India
Chief Guest:
A. K. Anil Kumar,
Director, ISRO Telemetry Tracking and
Command Network (ISTRAC), India
Time
6 - 7 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Is There Something Missing From Our Current Understanding of the Cosmos?
Speaker:
Wendy Freedman,
Dept. of Astronomy and Astrophysics,
Univ. of Chicago, IL, USA
Time
7 - 8 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Searching for Extraterrestrial Technological
Artifacts Near Earth
Speaker:
Avi Loeb,
Director, Institute for Theory & Computation,
Harvard University, USA
Day 2
March 17, 2026
Tuesday
Time
5 - 6 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Time to take the Big Bang out of the Big Bang Theory
Speaker:
Paul J. Steinhardt,
Dept of Physics, Princeton University, USA
Time
6 - 7 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
The Story of Black Hole: Life and Death of Massive Stars in the Universe
Speaker:
Pankaj S. Joshi,
International Center for Space & Cosmology, Ahmedabad University, India (Former Senior Professor, TIFR, Mumbai)
Time
7 - 8 pm | IST
Day 3
March 18, 2026
Wednesday
Time
5 - 6 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Is Dark Energy evolving with cosmic time?
Speaker:
Ofer Lahav,
Department of Physics & Astronomy,
University College London (UCL), UK
Time
6 - 7 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Plasma Cosmology
Speaker:
Tim Eastman,
(formerly) University of Alaska, USA
Time
7 - 8 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
The nature of the Universe: The Big Picture
Speaker:
George Ellis,
Mathematics Department, University of Cape Town, RSA
Day 4
March 19, 2026
Thursday
Time
5 - 6 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
An Optical Illusion at the Crossroads of Cosmological Models
Speaker:
Louis Marmet,
York University, Toronto, Canada
Time
6 - 7 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Is Earth Exceptional?
Speaker:
Mario Livio,
(Formerly) Space Telescope Science Institute,
Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Time
7 - 8 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Quantum Theory, Gravity, and the Cosmos
Speaker:
Tejinder Pal Singh,
Ex-Professor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai & Visiting Professor, IUCAA, India
Day 5
March 20, 2026
Friday
Time
5 - 6 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
A Fortunate Universe – Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos
Speaker:
Luke Barnes,
Western Sydney University, NSW, Australia
Time
6 - 7 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Does Universe have a Purpose?
Speaker:
Vasudeva Rao,
President, Bhaktivedanta Institute Kolkata, India
(Alumnus, IIT Kanpur)
Time
7 - 8 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
The Universe: Its Beginning, Its End, and The Role of Humanity in Universal History
Speaker:
Frank J. Tipler,
Professor of Mathematics, Tulane University, USA
Day 6
March 21, 2026
Saturday
Time
10 - 11 am | IST
Lecture Title:
String theory in the 20th Century: A Personal Perspective
Speaker:
John Schwarz,
California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA
Time
11 am - 12 Pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Bubbles and Voids versus Fancies – Oh My !
Speaker:
David Dilworth,
US Naval Postgraduate School, USA
Time
12 - 1 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Cosmology and Consciousness:
Search for a Complete Story of our Universe
Speaker:
Varun Agarwal,
Director, Bhaktivedanta Institute Kolkata, India
(Alumnus, IIT Kanpur)
Day 7
March 22, 2026
Sunday
Time
10 - 11 am | IST
Lecture Title:
Cosmology in Vedic Tradition
Speaker:
Manoranjan Sinha,
Dept. of Aerospace Engg., Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India
Time
11 am - 12 Pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Concept of Physical Time in the Vedas
Speaker:
R. N. Iyengar,
Centre for Ancient History & Culture,
Jain University, Bangalore, India (Former Chair Professor,
IISc Bangalore & Raja Ramanna Fellow, DAE)
Time
12 - 1 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
Essential Features of Indian Astronomy
Speaker:
M. S. Sriram,
Prof. K.V. Sarma Research Foundation, India
Time
1 - 1:35 pm | IST
Lecture Title:
A Voyage Through Our Heliosphere to study our nearest Star, the Sun
Speaker:
Dipankar Banerjee,
Vice-Chancellor, Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST), Thiruvananthapuram, India