Ravi Sood

Ravi Sood is the leading expert in stratospheric scientific ballooning in Australia.

He joined UNSW Canberra in 1986 as a Senior Lecturer and established the High Energy Astrophysics Research Group in the School of Physics. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 1992, and was the head of the School of Physics from 1995 to 2002.

His research interests are in the field of high energy astrophysics, and scientific stratospheric ballooning.

Current research activities include the development of instrumentation for hard X-ray astronomy, for use on space-borne and stratospheric balloon payloads.

He has participated in more than 100 stratospheric balloon flights for scientific research from sites in the UK, Zambia, Uganda, Maldive Islands and Australia.

Since 1984, he has provided support to NASA for its Southern Hemisphere scientific balloon campaigns in Australia. Such recent activities include the development of super-pressure balloons for long duration flights lasting up to three months.