Malayali astronomer and India’s first meteor scientist Aswin Sekhar has been bestowed the Queen’s Leader position by Queen’s University Belfast, one of the oldest universities in the UK and Ireland. 

Queen’s University Belfast has completed 180 years since its foundation and to mark this milestone, the University selected role models who made a significant impact beyond their usual job brief. “I was selected for my role as a science outreach ambassador and my work for science popularisation in rural and tribal parts of India and coordinating telescope donation programs for various schools and universities,” Sekhar told Onmanorama.

The honour was bestowed on him on November 6 at an event hosted by the British High Commissioner to India, Lindy Cameron, at the High Commissioner’s Office in New Delhi. The Queen’s University president and vice- chancellor Sir Ian Green was also present. The event also marked the opening of the University’s new campus in GIFT City (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City).

“The basic idea is to strengthen ties between Northern Ireland and India,” Sekhar said. “This recognition will help me broaden international collaboration between scientists in the UK and India, and also will inspire more students from both the UK and India to visit in exchange programmes in future. Plus, being a Queens Leader in astronomy, I will try to inculcate in the students of both countries the aspiration to reach for the stars and planets,” he said. 

The recognition comes barely five months after Sekhar became the first Indian to be elected to the decision-making bodies of two premier global astronomical societies: the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) in London and the International Astronomical Union (IAU) Commission on Meteor Science.

In 2023, recognising his seminal contributions to the field of meteors, the IAU named a minor planet (asteroid) in Aswin’s name (33928 Aswinsekhar). Aswin was only the sixth Indian to be conferred such an honour.

He is now in the august company of Nobel laureates Subramanya Chandrasekhar and C V Raman; Srinivasa Ramanujam, one of the greatest mathematicians the world has produced; the legendary space scientist Vikram Sarabhai; and the great astronomer Vainu Bappu of the Wilson-Bappu effect.