Kishalay De’s research interests lie in the transient optical/infrared sky to search for cataclysmic explosions in the Milky Way and in distant galaxies. He obtained his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 2021, where he worked on building the largest volume-limited sample of supernovae using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) survey to search for faint thermonuclear and core-collapse supernovae. His work led to the identification of new classes of explosions arising from helium shell detonations on white dwarfs and the deaths of extremely stripped massive stars.

De helped build the first wide-field infrared time domain survey, Gattini-IR at Palomar Observatory, that surveys three quarters of the sky every two nights. By looking in the near-infrared, De’s work revealed a population of dust obscured eruptions (novae, X-ray binaries, microlensing events and young stars) that are missed in optical surveys. De is currently working on systematic searches for neutron stars and black holes in the Milky Way via variable and erupting optical/infrared counterparts of Galactic X-ray sources, using time domain surveys like ZTF, Gattini-IR, WINTER and in the future, with the Vera Rubin observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope.