People · Director
PhD · A Director of CASSA — custodian of the HPC, radio telescopes and instruments.
Director PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Physical Sciences, IUB (Independent University, Bangladesh)
PhD: University of Groningen, Netherlands · Postdoc: SARAO (South African Radio Astronomy Observatory), South Africa
Probes the cosmic dawn and reionization through the redshifted 21-cm signal with LOFAR, and images diffuse radio halos in galaxy clusters with MeerKAT.
Director · CASSA
I am Khan Muhammad Bin Asad, an astrophysicist at CASSA and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Sciences at Independent University, Bangladesh (IUB), which I joined in January 2020.
Before IUB, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), working with MeerKAT — the South African precursor to the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). I earned my PhD in cosmology and radio astronomy from the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, where I worked with LOFAR, the Low Frequency Array — the largest low-frequency radio telescope array in Europe. My MSc in astrophysics was an Erasmus Mundus master’s, AstroMundus, spread across three universities — a semester at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, a semester at the University of Göttingen, Germany, and two at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy, where I completed my thesis on X-ray observations of the intracluster medium of galaxy clusters with NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory.
After joining IUB in 2020 I established the Astronomy Research Group, IUB (ARGI), which later grew into the Computational and Observational Astronomy Lab (COALab) — the two precursors to CASSA. As the principal proposer, alongside ten co-proposers, I led the proposal that gave rise to CASSA on 14 August 2025. At CASSA I serve as one of its two Directors and as custodian of the centre’s Timaeus HPC workspace.
There are only three things I love more than my professional work: my wife Nisha, my daughter Nimikh Subornorekha, and my reading of world literature through my own translations, made in collaboration with Claude.
My work centres on three research programs, all pursued at CASSA with artificial intelligence applied across all three. Each program spans multiple projects:
| Years | Role / Qualification | Institution |
|---|---|---|
| Work | ||
| 2025 – present | Director | CASSA · IUB, Bangladesh |
| 2020 – present | Assistant Professor | Department of Physical Sciences, IUB · Bangladesh |
| 2016 – 2019 | Postdoctoral Research Fellow | South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (Rhodes University & University of the Western Cape) · South Africa |
| Education | ||
| 2012 – 2016 | PhD in Astrophysics & Cosmology Thesis: Polarization leakage in epoch of reionization windows: The Low Frequency Array Case · Supervisor: Prof. Léon Koopmans | Kapteyn Astronomical Institute, University of Groningen · The Netherlands |
| 2010 – 2012 | MSc in Astrophysics (AstroMundus) Thesis: Study of the formation of Cold Fronts and Radio Mini-halos induced by the Intergalactic Gas Sloshing in the Cores of Galaxy Clusters · Supervisor: Prof. Pasquale Mazzotta | Universities of Innsbruck, Göttingen & Rome Tor Vergata · Austria · Germany · Italy |
| 2005 – 2009 | BSc, Electrical & Electronic Engineering | Islamic University of Technology · Gazipur, Bangladesh |
| 1999 – 2005 | Class 7–12 | Mirzapur Cadet College · Tangail, Bangladesh |
| 1997 – 1999 | Class 5–6 | Mukul Niketan High School · Mymensingh, Bangladesh |
| 1993 – 1997 | Class 1–4 | Satenga Government Primary School · Bhaluka, Mymensingh, Bangladesh |
Complete list of 27 papers, combining NASA ADS and Google Scholar — sortable by ADS citations, Scholar citations, or Asad share. Totals: 1,922 ADS citations · 2,562 Scholar citations · h-index 20. Snapshot 30 May 2026.
Citations received per year, from Google Scholar (the graph omits pre-2014). Snapshot 30 May 2026.