Astrophysical S-Factors in Primordial Nucleosynthesis

Carlos Salas is currently a graduate student at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, with research interests in theoretical nuclear physics, particularly in nuclear astrophysics. He graduated with Magna Cum Laude honors and received the semestral academic excellence distinction on two occasions during his undergraduate studies. Over the past year, he has collaborated with Prof. Neelima Kelkar on research topics related to the temperature dependence of nuclear decays and nuclear reactions of relevance to primordial nucleosynthesis.

Neelima Kelkar obtained her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Mumbai, India. Following the completion of her doctoral studies, she held an INFN postdoctoral fellowship at the Frascati National Laboratories in Italy for two years. Subsequently, she undertook visiting research positions at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, the University of Valencia, and the University of Barcelona in Spain. From 1998 to 2002, she served as a permanent research staff member at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Mumbai, India. Since August 2002, she has been a faculty member in the Department of Physics at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia, where she has supervised several Master’s theses and a number of doctoral dissertations. Her research interests span a wide range of topics, including hadron physics, parton models, quantum times, tunneling in solid-state junctions, physics of unstable systems, white dwarf physics, nuclear decays, and nuclear astrophysics. She has authored approximately 90 publications. In addition to her research contributions, she has co-edited a special issue of Advances in High Energy Physics titled “Perspectives on Decay and Time Evolution of Metastable States: From Particle Physics to Cosmology” (2018) and the research topic “Exotic Aspects of Hadrons and Nuclei” in Frontiers in Physics (2024). She has also served as a referee for several leading journals in particle and nuclear physics.