Manisha Caleb

Manisha Pranati Caleb is an Indian and Australian astrophysicist whose research has used interferometry to detect fast radio bursts, studied the local context of fast radio bursts, used their signals as probes into the distribution of matter in the universe, and discovered repeating signals from what may be very slowly-rotating neutron stars. She is a lecturer at the University of Sydney, in the Sydney Institute for Astronomy.

Education and career Caleb was a student at Stella Maris College, Chennai in India from 2007 to 2010. She went to University College London in England for a master's degree involving spacecraft and satellite communications. Next, she became a doctoral student at the Australian National University, where she began her work on fast radio bursts. Her 2017 doctoral dissertation, A pursuit of fast radio transients with the UTMOST and Parkes radio telescopes, was jointly supervised by Frank Briggs, Brian Schmidt, Matthew Bailes, and Chris Flynn.

She became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manchester in England before returning to Australia for her present position as a lecturer in the Sydney Institute for Astronomy of the University of Sydney.

Research Some of Caleb's major results include the first use of interferometry to detect fast radio bursts, in 2017, confirmation of the extra-galactic origin of these bursts, and the discoveries of ultra-long-period pulsars PSR J0901–4046 in 2020, the former slowest known pulsar at roughly 76 seconds per pulse, and ASKAP J1935+2148 in 2024, with roughly 54 minutes per pulse.

Selected publications