Dr. Cowsik's achievements range far and wide within the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology and non-accelerator particle physics. His prophetic work in the early 1970s called attention to the implications of a finite neutrino mass for the binding of galaxies and galaxy clusters, and more generally to the roles of weakly interacting particles and dark matter in the structure and dynamics of the cosmos. He has been called the father of 'astroparticle physics' - a marriage of astrophysics and cosmology (the sciences of the incredibly huge) with particle physics (the science of the inconceivably small). Among Dr. Cowsik's scientific contributions are establishing the highest observatory in the world--- in Hanle, Ladakh, in the Himalayas at an altitude of 15,000 feet, for astronomy in the optical and infrared wavelength bands, and significantly contributing to the understanding of highly energetic phenomena in astrophysics, such as cosmic rays, pulsars, supernova remnants, gamma ray bursts, active-galactic nuclei and other such sources powered by accretion flows. He is the former director of the Indian Institute for Astrophysics.

He is the inventor of the "leaky-box" and the "nested-leaky box" models extensively used to interpret the observations of cosmic rays.

Dr. Cowsik's research efforts are primarily directed toward building an extremely sensitive torsion balance to probe possible violations of the inverse square law of gravity at sub-millimeter scales, which are predicted by 'string-motivated' theories.

This follows up on his longstanding interest in constructing sensitive torsion balances and using them to study Einstein's equivalence principle and to search for new fundamental forces. He also is interested in several problems in high-energy astrophysics and dark matter.