From the Soil of Mithila, Bihar to the Mysteries of the Sun

Bibhuti Kumar Jha is a Research Scientist in the Solar System Science and Exploration Division at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. He studies how the Sun's magnetic field evolves across solar cycles and how that variability drives space weather at Earth.

His work combines century-long observational archives, such as those of the Kodaikanal Solar Observatory, with surface flux transport models like the Advective Flux Transport (AFT) model and machine learning tools that detect and track solar features. He has reconstructed the Sun's surface magnetism back to 1755, forecast the timing of the Solar Cycle 25 polar field reversal, and builds open-source software and datasets for the community.

He received his Ph.D. in Physics from Pondicherry University in 2022 for research carried out at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, and his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Physics from the University of Delhi.