Hi, I'm Akshat Agarwal.

Earth Sciences Student | IISER Pune & IPGP Paris

I am a 5th-year BS-MS student at IISER Pune and an M2 Masters student in Solid Earth Sciences at IPGP Paris.

My current work focuses on understanding the lithospheric structure underneath the Tibet region. It is a big question mark due to the unusual phenomenon of plate collision occurring there, and there are multiple contradicting tomographic models for the same regions with different reasoning to back them.

To settle this, we take leading tomographic models that have been converted from velocity to temperature and density. We pass this data through a pipeline that converts it into appropriate units, clips it, and formats it to be used as input data for the ASPECT solver.

Within ASPECT, an instantaneous solve is done with appropriate parameters to see how it reaches equilibrium. Output variables like topography, strain rate, stress, and velocities are compared to observed numbers to see which model is good and which is not.

Across all these domains, what I enjoy most about the research process is the repeated, iterative work of incrementally building up to a result. Whether that means continuously tuning friction parameters for a landslide model until the simulated deposition matches reality, adjusting cross-correlation parameters for ambient noise tomography, or iteratively updating ASPECT parameter files until a simulation reaches a viable equilibrium.