Hiranya V. Peiris

Hiranya Peiris holds the Professorship of Astrophysics (1909) at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. She is a Professorial Fellow at Murray Edwards College. She is a member of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology, Cambridge. Her research aims to test fundamental physics using large cosmological datasets, including the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and galaxy surveys, using an interdisciplinary approach combining observations, theoretical physics, and advanced statistical and machine learning methods. She is increasingly engaged in the interface between cosmology and galaxy evolution, and in gravitational wave astrophysics. More broadly beyond astrophysics, her research involves interdisciplinary collaborations at the interface of cosmology with particle physics and condensed matter physics.

Hiranya is the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant project CosmicExplorer, theory lead in the Quantum Simulators for Fundamental Physics (QSimFP) Consortium (funded by UKRI’s Quantum Technologies for Fundamental Physics programme), and a founding member of ALPHA, an international collaboration working to deploy a plasma haloscope to detect the QCD axion, a prime dark matter candidate. 

Hiranya's work has been recognised by awards such as the IOP Fred Hoyle Medal and Prize (2018), the Max Born Prize of the German Physical Society and the IOP (2021), and the Eddington Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (2021). Her contributions to survey cosmology have been recognised through a share of the Gruber Cosmology Prize (2012) and the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics (2018), both awarded to the WMAP Science Team. She was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2022.

After obtaining her undergraduate degree at Cambridge (1998), Hiranya completed her PhD at Princeton (2003). She was a Hubble Fellow at Chicago (2004-2007) before returning to Cambridge as a STFC Halliday Fellow (2007). Hiranya served as Vice-President (Astronomy) of the Royal Astronomical Society during 2016-2018. From 2020-2025, she served as a member of STFC Council, the senior strategic advisory body of the research council that funds particle physics and astronomy in the United Kingdom.