Nihal M is an exceptionally motivated student working in the field of Theoretical and Mathematical Physics and especially in General Relativity, Gravitational Radiation, Quantum Gravity, AdS/CFT duality, Loop Quantum Gravity and Shape Dynamics in particular. He is a rare combination of a scholar and researcher and is driven by a deep quest to understand and grasp the laws of Nature. He is mathematically and philosophically inclined and is drawn towards elegance and aesthetics as equally as towards truth. 

His research studies have led him to pursue Gravitational Physics on one hand and Quantum Field Theory and String Theory related topics on the other hand.

His mastery of technical topics in theoretical and mathematical physics include Differential Geometry and Topology, Singular Constrained Dynamics, Quantum Gravity, Loop Quantum Gravity, Shape Dynamics, Quantum Field Theory, Ads/CFT correspondence.

During his Bachelor's and Master's degree at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram (IISER TVM), he has gained a thorough understanding on classical mechanics, advanced quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, general relativity and cosmology, high energy physics, advanced quantum field theory, quantum information theory, etc; along with the mathematics courses on real analysis, complex analysis, abstract algebra, linear algebra and general topology.

During his Master's under the guidance of Dr. Bindusar Sahoo, he referred to various books and publications, some of which are, the book “Gauge/Gravity Duality” by Ammon and Erdmenger, “Introduction to AdS/CFT correspondence” by Nastase, review article “Holographic duality with a view toward many-body physics” by McGreevy. During this period, he learned about Supersymmetry, Conformal Field Theory, briefly studied Superstring Theory and its low energy limits leading to Type IIB Supergravity, origin and motivations of AdS/CFT correspondence and obtaining correlation functions using its conjectures. Following which, he has also collaborated with D. Mukherjee and A. Chattopadhyay and co-authored the publication “Flow of shear response functions in hyperscaling violating Lifshitz theories. Eur. Phys. J. C 83, 771 (2023).  https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-023-11943-8.”

At CFRCE as a Research Fellow he has acquired a great amount of knowledge on several core topics in Physics such as Differential Geometry and its use in Gravity, Constraint Dynamics, Canonical Gravity and problems of Quantization, Covariant Loop Quantum Gravity, Category Theory and Topological Quantum Field Theories and so on. He has worked through the book by Norbert Straumann, "General Relativity with applications to Astrophysics," that provides a rigorous background in the methods of modern differential geometry. For an understanding of the canonical approach and constraint dynamics of gravity he has gone through the “Lecture notes in physics, Canonical gravity: From Classical to Quantum” by Ehlers ed and C J Isham et al. He has also read the lecture notes by John Baez “Quantum gravity” and inculcated knowledge of diagrammatic methods in Linear Algebra, Topological Quantum Field theories and Category theory approach to quantum gravity. Additionally, he has been inspiring and mentoring undergraduate students at CFRCE.