Astrophysicist Syed Ashraf Uddin joins IUB faculty

Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB) has appointed Dr Syed Ashraf Uddin as Associate Professor in the Department of Physical Sciences, effective January 2026.

Joining the department's astrophysics group, Dr Uddin will help strengthen the university's academic curriculum and research output. In addition to his teaching responsibilities, he will serve as a core member of the Centre for Astronomy, Space Science and Astrophysics, a research centre he helped establish to advance astrophysics research in Bangladesh.

Dr Uddin brings more than two decades of international experience in observational astronomy and cosmology. His career includes roles as an astronomer at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC, and as a resident astronomer at the McDonald Observatory's Hobby–Eberly Telescope inTexas. He has also served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Carnegie Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science and as a postdoctoral research associate at Texas A&M University.

He was selected as a President's International Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences at the Purple Mountain Observatory, where he contributed to the Antarctic astronomy project.

Dr Uddin is a recognised researcher in supernova cosmology, with work focusing on the cosmic distance scale and the expansion rate of the universe, a key area related to the global 'Hubble tension'. He has led collaborative studies with the Carnegie Supernova Project to measure the Hubble constant using multiple distance calibrators. He was later selected to join an international expert team led by Nobel laureate Adam Riess to establish a global consensus on the Hubble constant through a cosmic distance network.

His research experience also includes significant contributions to time-domain astronomy through the Dark Energy Survey and the Australia–China Consortium for Astrophysical Research. He has been involved in observing strategies, data reduction, and the dissemination of Astronomer's Telegrams, and co-led spectroscopic follow-up observations of astronomical transients using the Wide Field Spectrograph on the 2.3-metre ANU telescope.

Dr Uddin has authored 64 peer-reviewed publications, receiving more than 5,600 citations according to the NASA Astrophysics Data System. He has an h-index of 33 and a g-index of 63, with research published in leading journals including The Astrophysical Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. His work also examines dark energy by analysing the relationship between Type Ia supernovae and their host galaxies.

He holds a PhD in astrophysics from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, an MSc in physics from the University of Kentucky in the United States, and an MSc in radio astronomy and space science from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. He completed his undergraduate studies in mechanical engineering at the Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.

At Independent University, Bangladesh, Dr Uddin will teach courses under the minor in astronomy and astrophysics, and the general education course AST 100: Our Cosmic History. He will also work with Dr Khan Asad to prepare a proposal for a Master of Science programme in astronomy and astrophysics, which will be open to students across Bangladesh.

His future research at IUB will focus on supernova cosmology and time-domain multi-messenger astronomy, using data from the Las Campanas Observatory and the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time. He plans to develop automated transient follow-up systems, advocate for a research-grade optical observatory, and actively involve undergraduate and graduate students in his research initiatives.