Imran Sultan

Ph.D. Candidate in Physics at Northwestern

I'm Imran.

I build scientific data analysis tools for large-scale astrophysical simulations on HPC systems. I am currently a doctoral researcher at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics at Northwestern University.

I'm also deeply passionate about science communication, public outreach, and art collaborations through astrophotography.

Languages

Python C/C++

Scientific Stack

NumPy SciPy Astropy HDF5

HPC & Parallel

MPI Numba CUDA SLURM

Tools & Viz

Linux Git Matplotlib ParaView

Research Projects

Building Python tools to analyze high-resolution galaxy formation simulations and understand how gas accretion in the circumgalactic medium shapes galaxy formation.

Process terabyte-scale FIRE simulation outputs using scientific Python and parallel computing libraries
Mentor undergraduate and high school students in Python for astrophysics research

Advisor: Prof. Claude-André Faucher-Giguère

Group: GalForm, CIERA

Visualizations

Gas in a FIRE halo at four different scales (from the halo to galaxy)

Click to enlarge

Gas in a FIRE halo at four different scales (from the halo to galaxy)

Shrinking sphere halo centering in FIRE

FIRE massive galaxy halo

Created a new method for modeling subhalo mass evolution across cosmic time in trillion-particle gravity-only simulations.

Developed SMACC (Subhalo Mass-loss Analysis using Core Catalogs), and released SMACC-parallel, an open-source, MPI-parallel implementation
Processed extreme-scale HACC simulations on DOE HPC systems using efficient parallel algorithms

smacc-parallel itk

Advisor: Dr. Katrin Heitmann & Dr. Salman Habib

Group: CPAC Group, Argonne National Lab

Visualizations

Alpha Quadrant dark matter distribution

Alpha Quadrant dark matter distribution

Core tracking: halo merger history

Halo particle tracking from z~10

Astrophotography

I photograph the night sky, exploring the intersection of science and art. My work spans planetary, solar, and deep-sky astrophotography and has been internationally recognized.

Shop Prints Follow @imran.astro View Gallery

2× NASA APOD Astronomy Picture of the Day

🏅

Royal Society '23, '24, '25 Winner

📰

As seen in CNN, The Guardian, Physics Today

🏛️

Art Institute of Chicago Charles Gaines' Night/Crimes

Featured Work

Western Veil Nebula

Physics Today

Western Veil Nebula

Heart and Soul Nebulae

Royal Society '24

Heart and Soul Nebulae

Dancing on the Edge of Fire

Royal Society '25

Dancing on the Edge of Fire

Wolf Moon Engulfs Mars

APOD

Wolf Moon Engulfs Mars

Dance of Fireflies in the Core of the Milky Way

Dance of Fireflies in the Core of the Milky Way

Equinox at Saturn

APOD

Equinox at Saturn

Press & Media Coverage

NASA Features

Equinox at Saturn NASA APOD Sep 22, 2025 Wolf Moon Engulfs Mars NASA APOD Jan 15, 2025

Royal Society Photography Competition

2025 Winners & Runners-up Royal Society 2025 The 10 enlightening winners of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025 PetaPixel Dec 2025 You'll never guess what took first place at the Royal Society's Photo Competition Gizmodo Dec 2025 2024 Winners & Runners-up Royal Society 2024 Royal Society Publishing photo winners CNN Dec 2024 Photo of coiling net-caster spider silk wins Royal Society competition Chemistry World Dec 2024 2024 Royal Society Publishing Photography Prize Popular Science Dec 2024 Hunting sharks photo wins top prize in Royal Society competition Fox Weather Dec 2024 A Martian landscape on Earth: 10 best images from the Royal Society Photography Competition Science Focus 2024 2023 Winners & Runners-up Royal Society 2023 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2023 – in pictures The Guardian Dec 2023

Art Institute of Chicago

Charles Gaines: Night/Crimes Exhibition Art Institute of Chicago Aug 2025 – Feb 2026

Northwestern Coverage

Northwestern grad student wins international photography competition — again Daily Northwestern Jan 2025 Imran Sultan wins global photography competition, second year in a row Northwestern Now Dec 2024 CIERA Astronomer Evenings bring astronomy education to the public CIERA Northwestern Jul 2024 Nights at Dearborn Observatory: CIERA Astronomer Evenings Daily Northwestern Jul 2024 Physics grad student wins global photography competition Northwestern Now Dec 2023

Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) Coverage

Green comet visible in the night sky for first time since Stone Age CIERA Northwestern Feb 2023 Rare green comet images shared by astronomy enthusiasts CNN Feb 2023 Green comet 2023: How to see it and best images Mashable Feb 2023 Green comet 2023: Where to see it live & best photos Yahoo! Feb 2023 Rare green comet is passing Earth right now on a 50,000-year journey CNET Feb 2023 Bright green comet on 50,000-year journey passes Earth this week MSN Feb 2023

Publications

Western Veil Nebula featured in Backscatter Physics Today

Publications

Hot Accretion onto Spiral Galaxies: The Origin of Extended and Warped HI Discs

Sankar, S., Stern, J., Power, C., et al.

Cooling Flows as a Reference Solution for the Hot Circumgalactic Medium

Sultan, I., Faucher-Giguère, C.-A., Stern, J., et al.

Effects of Multichannel Active Galactic Nuclei Feedback in FIRE Cosmological Simulations

Byrne, L., Faucher-Giguère, C.-A., Wellons, S., et al.

Ne VIII in the Warm-hot Circumgalactic Medium of FIRE Simulations

Wijers, N. A., Faucher-Giguère, C.-A., Stern, J., et al.

Farpoint: A High-Resolution Cosmology Simulation at the Gpc Scale

Frontiere, N., Heitmann, K., Rangel, E., et al.

The Last Journey II: SMACC – Subhalo Mass-loss Analysis using Core Catalogs

Sultan, I., Frontiere, N., Habib, S., et al.

The Last Journey I: An Extreme-Scale Simulation on the Mira Supercomputer

Heitmann, K., Frontiere, N., Rangel, E., et al.

Contact

Evanston, IL

sultan@u.northwestern.edu @imran.astro isulta LinkedIn @GalaxySimImran

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