Sarbani Basu is a Professor in the Department of Astronomy at Yale University. She is also the current Chair of the Department. Dr. Basu received her training in India, and subsequently worked in the U.K. and Denmark before moving to the US to join the Institute for Advance Study, Princeton, NJ. She has been on the faculty of Yale since 2000.

Dr. Basu specializes in the study of the Sun and other stars using data on stellar oscillations (star quakes). Her past research was devoted to studying the details of the structure and dynamics of the Sun, which allowed her claim, long before the particle physics community, that the solar neutrino problem was a problem with the standard model of particle physics, not that of astrophysics. Her current research focuses on two separate topics: The first is the study of variations in the Sun over time-scales that are of societal relevance. To this end she uses solar oscillation data to examine changes that take place inside the Sun over periods of years and decades. Her second focus is to study stars, in particular exo-planet hosts, to determine their structure, age and formation histories in order to understand those systems as well as to shed light on the past and future of the Sun and the solar system.

This talk was presented at the Westport Astronomical Society on April 16, 2019.