An increasing number of India's women physicists are making globally recognised contributions in industry, academia, and cutting-edge research, even as female representation in university physics faculties remains stubbornly low, according to a new report by Physics World. The report, published in early August 2025, highlighted a webinar that celebrated the achievements of women physicists actively shaping the country's research and development landscape.

Who the Webinar Spotlighted

Kaveri Hukku, chief executive of ATOS Instruments Marketing Services, holds a master's degree in physics and heads a firm that supplies advanced scientific instruments and equipment — sourced from third-party manufacturers worldwide — to research institutions and companies across India. Her role bridges the gap between global scientific innovation and Indian laboratories.

Laser physicist Asima Pradhan, formerly of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur and now affiliated with SOA University, is also driving her start-up PhotoSpimedix, which is developing portable optical devices for clinical applications — a field with direct public health implications.

Urbasi Sinha, who holds an MSci in natural sciences and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, leads the quantum information and computing (QuIC) lab at the Raman Research Institute in Bengaluru. According to the report, the QuIC lab is among the first in India to deploy entangled and 'heralded' single-photon sources for quantum science and technology — including India's first project on satellite-based quantum communication.

The Representation Gap

Despite women accounting for more than 40 per cent of Indian science graduates, they make up only about 16 per cent of all physics faculty at Indian universities — a figure close to the global average of roughly 17 per cent. The Physics World report attributes the disparity to a range of structural and social barriers.

'As in many other parts of the world, there are myriad reasons for the low numbers, ranging from social pressure to prioritize families over research careers to a lack of visible role models and even sexual misconduct,' the report noted. The persistence of these barriers, despite India's strong pipeline of women science graduates, points to a systemic attrition problem rather than a talent shortage.

A Legacy of Trailblazers

India's history of exceptional women in physics stretches back decades. Bibha Chowdhuri, who co-discovered the meson, became the first Indian woman to receive a PhD in physics. More recently, Ritu Karidhal made key contributions to India's Mars mission. These figures form a continuum of achievement that the webinar sought to honour and extend.

Shobha Shukla, one of India's leading researchers in nanophotonics and materials science, organised the webinar. 'We are celebrating the women who are writing history in labs, industry and lecture halls right now,' Shukla said, describing the effort as 'a necessity to build a culture of equity and innovation.'

What This Signals for Indian R&D

The profiles featured in the Physics World report collectively illustrate a shift: women physicists in India are no longer confined to academic roles but are founding start-ups, leading quantum research programmes, and supplying the instrumentation backbone of the country's scientific ecosystem. This comes amid a broader national push to scale up R&D investment, making the under-representation of women in physics faculty a policy concern as much as a cultural one. Greater visibility of role models such as Hukku, Pradhan, and Sinha is seen as a critical lever for reversing the attrition trend in the years ahead.