Shanil Viraniholds a joint appointment in Physics and Astronomy at JMU.
He grew up in Canada, the child of Ugandan Refugees. His parents fled Idi Amin.
Shanil is currently a Yale doctoral candidate in physics and Astronomy.
Before graduate school, he worked on the teams managing the Chandra X-ray Observatory– which since being launched in 1999, has been NASA's flagship mission for X-ray astronomy.