Presidency university, which has played a major role in shaping higher education and research in modern India, is celebrating its bi-centenary this year. As a part of this celebration, and keeping in mind its rich legacy and heritage in modern research over the last 200 years we are organising a conference on “Universe after the first 200 million years”.

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Our Universe went through several landmark episodes after its origin through the “big-bang”. One such episode, known as "Cosmic Dawn, Reionization & Post-reionization", started when universe was nearly 200 million years old. Stars, quasars which are main sources of light and energy are believed to have appeared, first time, in our universe around that time. Universe was transformed from completely neutral to nearly ionized during this episode. Tremendous efforts, all over the globe including in India, are underway to observe and understand this episode using redshifted HI 21-cm signal. Research activities in these areas have been in fore fonts and gained huge attention within India because of experiments being planned or conducted with various existing telescopes such OWFA (i.e. OOty Widefield Array), uGMRT (Near Pune), SARAS, MWA, and also because of India’s active involvement with the world’s most powerful upcoming telescope Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

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This conference will further accelerate these activities, showcase our commitments and responsibility towards this global effort. The goal is to bring together faculty members, postdocs, students working on this science in various institutes, universities in India and abroad and to provide a platform where experts can share their knowledge, experiences with younger members of this community. It will also provide an opportunity to form collaborations, asses ongoing activities within the SKA India reionization science working group. Our aim would  be to specially encourage younger generation who will be the key for such a long, challenging, ambitious project.

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The conference is supported by the SKA India project (DAE).