Exploring the cosmos

"UCL gave so much to me, so I want to give something back" - UCL alumna Indhu Varatharajan says the university's support gave her lift-off as a planetary scientist.

Coming from a small village in Tamil Nadu, India, planetary science was perhaps not the most obvious of career pursuits for Indhu Varatharajan. But when she was in seventh grade, the Columbia space shuttle disaster sparked school conversations about the universe, and her interest was piqued.

In a meeting with a careers counsellor, Indhu explained her passion for the cosmos and was advised to study for a degree in geoinformatics, which she undertook in Chennai. An internship saw her travel to the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) in Berlin, where she learnt to apply geoinformatics to different planets. This ultimately led to a job in the planetary sciences arm of the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad.

While her job was a giant leap, which saw her start working on spectroscopy (studying the interaction between matter and radiation), it was always Indhu’s intention to do a master’s in Planetary Science. And in 2015, thanks to a Commonwealth Scholarship, she was able to enrol at UCL.

Read Indhu's full story here.