Jamia Millia Islamia alumnus Dr. Rahul Kumar Walia awarded Royal Society Newton International Fellowship

New Delhi, June 12, 2026: Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI) announced that Dr. Rahul Kumar Walia, a former PhD scholar of the Centre for Theoretical Physics (CTP), has been awarded the prestigious Royal Society Newton International Fellowship and joined University College London (UCL) for postdoctoral research.

The Newton International Fellowship, awarded by the Royal Society, is among the UK’s most competitive programmes for early‑career researchers. It supports exceptional scientists in establishing independent research careers and building long‑term international collaborations. At UCL, Dr. Walia will hold the title of Royal Society Newton International Fellow.

Dr. Walia completed his doctoral studies at CTP under Prof. Sushant G. Ghosh. His PhD work made notable contributions to black hole physics and gravitational lensing and produced the Kumar–Ghosh black hole parameter‑estimation framework. The research was published as “Black Hole Parameter Estimation from Its Shadow” in The Astrophysical Journal (Vol. 892, 2020).

After his PhD, Dr. Walia received several international fellowships, including the Fulbright–Nehru Postdoctoral Fellowship from the United States‑India Educational Foundation, which supported his research at the University of Arizona. He also served a postdoctoral tenure at the University of KwaZulu‑Natal.

An active member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) and next‑generation EHT collaborations, Dr. Walia has authored 32 research papers with over 3,300 citations and an h‑index of 23. He has co‑authored 27 papers with his supervisor; five of their joint publications received the IOP Top Cited Paper Award (India) between 2019 and 2023.