{"id":5017,"date":"2026-05-13T15:10:29","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T19:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/?post_type=profiles&#038;p=5017"},"modified":"2026-08-10T10:15:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T14:15:14","slug":"kishor-banlya","status":"publish","type":"profiles","link":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/profiles\/kishor-banlya\/","title":{"rendered":"Kishor Baniya"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-group-is-layout-flex\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"599\" src=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Baniya-Kishor.jpg\" alt=\"by Corban Swain\" class=\"wp-image-5573\" style=\"aspect-ratio:1;width:151px;height:auto\" srcset=\"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Baniya-Kishor.jpg 400w, https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/05\/Baniya-Kishor-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group\"><div class=\"wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Caldwell University<\/strong><br>Faculty Advisor: Prof. Richard Teague<br>Research Supervisor: Isabella Macias<br>Department: Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:0px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Biography<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kishor Baniya is an undergraduate student at Caldwell University, double-majoring in<br>Mathematics and Computer Science with a minor in Physics. His career goals are to obtain<br>a Ph.D. in Astrophysics, acquire a research position at NASA-JPL, and pioneer cutting-edge<br>research facilities back in his hometown, Nepal. As an NSF CI Compass fellow, Kishor has<br>further interests in High Performance Computing. His research spans from investigating<br>swirling protoplanetary disks to mysterious dark matter particles. With an emphasis on citizen<br>science, he has also participated in the NASA L&#8217;SPACE Academy and UMD GRADMAP.<br>At MIT, he works with Dr. Richard Teague and Isabella Macias at the Planet Formation Lab,<br>developing robust methods for spectral analyses on JWST-MIRI observations. Beyond research,<br>Kishor is devoted to songwriting and outreach, with experience at the Harvard CfA and service<br>as the president of the astronomy club. Caldwell named him Student of the Year in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center wp-block-paragraph\"><br><strong>DeSICCATOR: Deconvolution of Spectral Interference via Component<br>Characterization and Analysis of Target Observational Residuals<\/strong><br>Kishor Baniya1, 2, Richard Teague2, Isabella Macias2, and Lisa W\u00f6lfer2<br>1Department of Mathematics and Physics, Caldwell University<br>2Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology<br>JWST\/MIRI has opened a new window into the study of molecular composition in protoplanetary<br>disks, but dense water emission often obscures other planet-forming molecules such as HCN,<br>CO2, and C2H2. Current water subtraction methods rely on slow, case-by-case radiative transfer<br>fitting, limiting their scalability to large disk surveys. We investigate whether Principal Component<br>Analysis (PCA) can compress water emission models into a compact basis for rapid, generalizable<br>subtraction. Using the LTE slab package IRIS, we generate a library of synthetic water spectra<br>spanning disk-relevant temperatures and column densities. Through singular value decomposition,<br>we find that four components capture 99.95% of the library variance, confirming that water emission<br>is intrinsically low-dimensional. Applying this basis, we recover water models without per-object<br>fitting and find that the component scores show a strong correlation with the underlying excitation<br>conditions. We implement this framework in DeSICCATOR, an open-source Python package that<br>provides fast water subtraction and excitation diagnostics for current and future disk surveys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":5386,"template":"","profile_category":[25],"class_list":["post-5017","profiles","type-profiles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","profile_category-2026-interns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/profiles"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5664,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profiles\/5017\/revisions\/5664"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"profile_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oge.mit.edu\/msrp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/profile_category?post=5017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}