Devesh Nandal

Devesh Nandal is a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. He builds next-generation stellar evolution models for massive and supermassive stars. His work develops the physics of rotation, angular-momentum transport, and various mass loss mechanisms. He also studies how dark-matter reshapes stellar structure and lifetimes. He applies these models to the early universe to test whether massive and supermassive Population III stars formed and left observable traces. He computes nucleosynthetic yields and compares predicted N/O, C/O, and Ne/O to high-redshift galaxies to identify chemical fossils. He also computes non-LTE stellar atmospheres and predicts spectroscopic signatures such as the Balmer-break morphology with Hβ in emission and higher-order lines in absorption. This program links stellar physics to JWST observations and to the origin of the first heavy black-hole seeds.