Bidya is no stranger to solar dynamo modeling. He earned his PhD in 2013 under the direction of Arnab Choudhuri at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore.

Since the dawn of the Space Age in the 1950s, solar maxima have coincided with strong upticks in sunspot activity but the current cycle, Cycle 24, which was expected to peak in Spring of 2013, has been unusually quiet.