Cosmic Connections
 Second Edition: AI/ML Across Cosmic Scales

Building on the first edition of Cosmic Connections, this national meeting will bring together researchers in cosmology. The 2026 edition will focus on the growing role of artificial intelligence and machine learning across cosmic scales, while retaining a broad scientific scope covering topics from the Early, Intermediate, and Late Universe. The talks and discussions are distributed (but not limited to) in the following areas:  

  • Early Universe: Inflation, primordial perturbations, CMB, primordial GWs      
  • Intermediate Universe: Dark ages, cosmic dawn, reionization, JWST results
  • Late Universe: Dark energy, large-scale structure, galaxy surveys, Lyman-alpha forest, 21cm cosmology, tensions in cosmology

 In addition to encouraging discussions on recent research developments and fostering collaborations within the community, Cosmic Connections aims to provide a platform for early-career researchers, especially PhD students and postdoctoral researchers, to present their work, interact with the broader community, and explore future academic opportunities.    The meeting will be live streamed on the matsciencechannel. Registration link: Please register for the conference following the link: https://forms.gle/ZUwugtauUbVzSVep8There is no registration fee for the conference.Note that only PhD students, Postdocs and faculty members can register. Deadline for registration is July 25, 2026. Website for the first edition of Cosmic Connections: https://sites.google.com/imsc.res.in/cosmic-connections

Conference Date: 
Mon, 07/09/2026 to Fri, 11/09/2026
Conference Venue: 

Ramanujan Auditorium, IMSc, Chennai

Conference URL: 
Cosmic Connections Second Edition
Programme
Conference: 7–9 September 2026  ·  AI/ML Workshop: 10–11 September 2026
Programme formatsPlenary talk40 + 5 minContributed talk25 + 5 minFlash talk3 + 2 minWorkshopFormat to be decided by the speakers
Conference · Day 1

Monday, 7 September 2026

Session 1

08:30–10:30

Time Format Speaker Title
08:30–09:00 Address   Inauguration
09:00–09:45 Plenary Talk Sharvari Nadkarni-Ghosh Approximate methods to model non-linear large scale structure
09:45–10:30 Plenary Talk Suddhasattwa Brahma From Hidden Symmetries to Thermal Seeds: Open Quantum Dynamics during Inflation
10:30–11:00
Coffee Break

Session 2

11:00–12:30

Time Format Speaker Title
11:00–11:45 Plenary Talk H. V. Ragavendra Exploring primordial dynamics using cosmological gravitational wave
11:45–12:30 Plenary Talk Namrata Roy From Black Holes to the Cosmic Baryon Cycle: Mapping Feedback Across Cosmic Scales across Cosmic Time
12:30–14:00
Lunch Break

Session 3

14:00–16:30

Time Format Speaker Title
14:00–14:30 Contributed Talk Aurindam Mondal Quantum Measures of Early Universe cosmology: Investigation of Bell inequality for squeezed coherent state of inflationary perturbations
14:30–15:00 Contributed Talk Jaya Doliya Dark Recipe for the First Giants
15:00–15:30 Contributed Talk Pralay Biswas Insights from the Previously Unseen Low-mass HST-dark Galaxies with JWST/UNCOVER
15:30–16:00 Contributed Talk Anshuman Tripathi Bridging Galaxy Evolution and the 21-cm Signal through Joint Machine Learning Constraints on the Epoch of Reionization
16:00–16:30 Contributed Talk Rahul Shah AI/ML Techniques for Model-Independent Cosmological Analysis
16:30–17:00
Coffee Break

Session 4

17:00–18:30

Time Format Speaker Title
17:00–17:30 Contributed Talk Joseph P. J. Kernel dependence of the Gaussian Process reconstruction of late Universe expansion history.
17:30–18:00 Contributed Talk Vikhyat Sharma N-body Simulations of cosmologies with Light Massive Relics
18:00–18:30 Contributed Talk Saptarshi Sarkar Reconciling large-scale Lyman-alpha correlations with the SCRIPT Semi-numerical Model
Conference · Day 2

Tuesday, 8 September 2026

Session 1

09:00–10:30

Time Format Speaker Title
09:00–09:45 Plenary Talk Koushik Dutta Scalaron Dark Matter Dynamics in f(R) Gravity
09:45–10:30 Plenary Talk Priyanka Singh Velocity Reconstruction for kSZ effect across Baryonic Feedback Mode
10:30–11:00
Coffee Break

Session 2

11:00–12:30

Time Format Speaker Title
11:00–11:45 Plenary Talk Abhirup Datta Low-Frequency Radio Cosmology with the SKA
11:45–12:30 Plenary Talk Suchetana Chatterjee Black Holes in the Cosmic Web
12:30–14:00
Lunch Break

Session 3

14:00–16:30

Time Format Speaker Title
14:00–14:30 Contributed Talk Shikhar Mittal Probing Interacting Dark Matter with the SARAS3 21-cm Cosmic Dawn Non-Detection
14:30–15:00 Contributed Talk Ranjini Mondal Dark Secrets of Baryons: Illuminating Dark Matter-Baryon Interactions with JWST
15:00–15:30 Contributed Talk Anirban Chowdhary Conditional Luminosity Functions of Active Galactic Nuclei in Simulations
15:30–16:00 Contributed Talk Masroor Bashir The CatWISE2020 Quasar Dipole: A Reassessment of the Cosmic Dipole Anomaly
16:00–16:30 Contributed Talk Nilanjandev Bhaumik Population of near-solar-mass primordial black holes in LVK and NANOGrav
16:30–17:00
Coffee Break

Session 4

17:00–18:40

Time Format Speaker Title
17:00–17:05 Flash Talk Rounak Nath Constraints on the inflationary vacuum and reheating era from NANOGrav
17:05–17:10 Flash Talk Hiten Primordial Magnetic Fields and Early Structure Formation: Implications for theHigh-Redshift 21 cm Signal
17:10–17:15 Flash Talk Manpreet Singh Constraining the Neutral Hydrogen Fraction across Different Reionization Histories using Lyman Alpha Dark Gap Statistics.
17:15–17:20 Flash Talk Shiriny Akthar Probing the End of Reionization with 21cm-[CII] Cross-Correlation
17:20–17:25 Flash Talk Anoop Krishna HaloFieldNet: Emulating Halo Source Fields for 21-cm Reionization
17:25–17:30 Flash Talk Yashrajsinh Mahida Emulating 21-cm Reionisation Signal Maps and Their Summary Statistics
17:30–17:35 Flash Talk Mayukh Mandal Seeing Through the Foregrounds: Bayesian Inference and Signal Reconstruction for the EoR 21-cm Signal
17:35–17:40 Flash Talk Manas Mohit Dosibhatla Tracing Cosmic Web Morphology with SKA-Mid 21-cm and CO Line Intensity Mapping Surveys
17:40–17:45 Flash Talk Durba Ghosh Probing Dark Matter–Baryon Interactions with Line Intensity Mapping: Forecasts forCOMAP-EoR and COMAP-ERA.
17:45–17:50 Flash Talk Bhuwan Joshi Constraining Lorentz Violation using 21cm and CMB Cross Correlations
17:50–17:55 Flash Talk Prabhav Singh Signatures of Primordial Black Hole Induced Neutrinos in the Universe
17:55–18:00 Flash Talk Animesh Maji Fantastic Beasts and where to find them : The population of Black Hole - LuminousCompanion binaries in different galaxy environments
18:00–18:05 Flash Talk Gokhula Prasad Bound State dark matter in the Early Universe: Solving the Cosmological Tensions:
18:05–18:10 Flash Talk Tulip Ray Dark Matter Halo Dynamics in Yukawa Modified Gravity: From Spherical Collapse to the Splashback Radius
18:10–18:15 Flash Talk Dhiraj Kuniyal An insight to Hubble Tension from the non-interacting limit of interacting dark energy-matter
18:15–18:20 Flash Talk Priyanka Saha A Systematic Comparison of Quasi-Static and Subhorizon Approximations in interacting Dark Energy Cosmologies.
18:20–18:25 Flash Talk Sayantan Ghosh Reconstructing Dirac-Born-Infeld Dark Energy From Dynamical System to Gaussian Process
18:25–18:30 Flash Talk Jatin Kumar A Hybrid Box Approach for Identifying High Resolution Halos.
18:30–18:35 Flash Talk Bhargabi Saha Warm α-Attractor Inflation: Dynamics and Observational Viability
18:35–18:40 Flash Talk Rinchen Sherpa Semi analytic subhalo mass functions for dark matter baryon scattering
Conference · Day 3

Wednesday, 9 September 2026

Session 1

09:00–10:30

Time Format Speaker Title
09:00–09:45 Plenary Talk S. Shankaranarayanan The Memory of the Universe: A Purely Gravitational Probe for Cosmological Tensions
09:45–10:30 Plenary Talk Mayuri S. Rao The First Light, First Atoms, First Stars - An experimental perspective
10:30–11:00
Coffee Break

Session 2

11:00–12:30

Time Format Speaker Title
11:00–11:30 Contributed Talk Harsh Mehta Insights into JWST observations using the Oldest Cosmic Light.
11:30–12:00 Contributed Talk Anirban Chakraborty Understanding the Properties of Reionization-Era Galaxies in the JWST Era
12:00–12:30 Contributed Talk Roshna K. Constraining flat ΛCDM model using Jackknife and Bootstrap resampling
12:30–14:00
Lunch Break

Session 3

14:00–16:30

Time Format Speaker Title
14:00–14:30 Contributed Talk Debabrata Chandra Reconstructing Primordial Power Spectrum for Widest Scales from CMB
14:30–15:00 Contributed Talk Ujjwal Kumar Upadhyay Can Distance Duality Violation Save Late-time Solutions to the Hubble Tension?
15:00–15:30 Contributed Talk Yash Koushal Cosmological N-Body Simulations of Dissipative Self-Interacting Dark Matter
15:30–16:00 Contributed Talk Siddhant Sen One Halo, Two Boundaries: Relating Accretion Shocks and Splashback Radii in Galaxy Clusters.
16:00–16:30 Contributed Talk Suchira Sarkar Exploring the local universe galaxy populations using 4MOST Hemisphere survey & application of machine learning
16:30–17:00
Coffee Break

Session 4

17:00–18:30

Time Format Speaker Title
17:00–18:30 Poster Session 20 posters together Poster Session
AI/ML Workshop · Day 1

Thursday, 10 September 2026

Session 1

09:00–11:00

Time Format Speaker Title
09:00–11:00 Workshop Talk Tirthankar Roy Choudhury Reionization: parameter inference using SBI
11:00–11:30
Coffee Break

Session 2

11:30–12:30

Time Format Speaker Title
11:30–12:30 Workshop Talk Suman Majumdar Emulators for the cosmic 21-cm signal
12:30–14:00
Lunch Break

Session 3

14:00–16:00

Time Format Speaker Title
14:00–15:00 Workshop Talk Suman Majumdar Emulators for the cosmic 21-cm signal
15:00–16:00 Workshop Talk Madhurima Choudhury Recovering 21cm signal and parameters from simulated radio-interferomteric datasets:
16:00–16:30
Coffee Break

Session 4

16:30–17:30

Time Format Speaker Title
16:30–17:30 Workshop Talk Madhurima Choudhury Recovering 21cm signal and parameters from simulated radio-interferomteric datasets:
AI/ML Workshop · Day 2

Friday, 11 September 2026

Afternoon workshop: three parallel tracks run simultaneously in Sessions 3 and 4; participants may follow the track of their choice.

Session 1

09:00–11:00

Time Format Speaker Title
09:00–10:00 Workshop Talk Shadab Alam AI/ML and inference with large-scale structure
10:00–11:00 Workshop Talk Soumak Maitra ML for cosmological fields
11:00–11:30
Coffee Break

Session 2

11:30–12:30

Time Format Speaker Title
11:30–12:30 Workshop Talk Debabrata Adak AI/ML for CMB data analysis
12:30–14:00
Lunch Break

Session 3

14:00–16:00 · Parallel sessions

Parallel 1 Ramanujan Auditorium
Shadab Alam
Parallel 2 E C G Sudarshan Hall
Soumak Maitra
Parallel 3 Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall
Debabrata Adak
16:00–16:30
Coffee Break

Session 4

16:30–18:00 · Parallel sessions

Parallel 1 Ramanujan Auditorium
Shadab Alam
Parallel 2 E C G Sudarshan Hall
Soumak Maitra
Parallel 3 Alladi Ramakrishnan Hall
Debabrata Adak

Times and programme details are subject to change.

How to contact us:

You can contact the local organizers for any information regarding the workshop. Here are the email addresses:

Debabrata Chandra, email: debabratac [at] imsc.res.in

Ajoy Dawn, email: ajoydawn [at] imsc.res.in

Anik Ghosh, email: anikg [at] imsc.res.in

Sanhitaa Guha, email: sanhitaag [at] imsc.res.in

Dhiraj Kumar Hazra, email: dhiraj [at] imsc.res.in