Yale astrophysicist Priya Natarajan says artificial intelligence is on the verge of a fundamental shift in the scientific method

Priya Natarajan is a distinguished astrophysicist and the first Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University. She also serves as external principal investigator for Harvard University’s Black Hole Initiative. Professor Natarajan has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the universe, particularly in dark matter and supermassive black holes. A well-known figure in the scientific community, her honors include the 2022 Liberty Science Center Genius Award and the prestigious 2025 Danny Heinemann Prize in Astrophysics. In 2024, she was named to the TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people for her pioneering contributions to the field. Professor Natarajan has been a faculty member at Yale University since 2000 and serves as a key consultant on the following projects: NASAthe National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Department of Energy (DoE). During her recent visit to Bangalore to attend the Indiaspora Forum, a gathering of global Indian leaders, she Ishani Duttagupta Discussing her enduring relationship with India, the transformative role of artificial intelligence in astrophysics, and the future of cosmic exploration. Below are edited excerpts from their conversation.There are many Indian students who travel to the United States for higher education, especially in the field of science. Do they face any challenges? The growing strain on the U.S. science and technology research funding system is deeply concerning. For decades, the well-established research model in the United States has been federal funding of basic science, supporting graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. It fosters a unique ecosystem that provides intensive mentoring and expertise building based on a well-resourced university and faculty engaged in cutting-edge research. International student mobility is critical to keeping this engine running. As funding dwindles, the United States may lose its status as a top destination and become less attractive to the world’s brightest young people. I think that’s a concern. Additionally, there is a fundamental shift in the field of AI-driven research that is both exciting and unknown. While the initial “LLM revolution” in AI catered to specific business use cases, it also required a shift in the research pivot. Due to the huge demand for computing, universities have ceded research on this cutting-edge artificial intelligence to the corporate sector. However, as we move toward “scientific AI”—where the short-term monetary returns may not be clear—intellectual work may be refocused into universities. These are big uncertainties. Although I see some skepticism among some colleagues, we are on the verge of a fundamental shift in the scientific approach to AI. What really matters in the end is achieving the breakthroughs that constitute truly “good science.”As a distinguished scholar in the field of astrophysics, please outline the most important paradigm shifts and technological advances currently reshaping our understanding of the universe?Astrophysics is the original “big data” science. Since the first systematic mapping of the entire night sky in the 1920s and 1930s, the field has evolved from physical photographic negatives to massive digital data sets. It’s a technically intensive subject that requires a lot of calculations and better cameras. The new instrument not only provided a better view, but also inspired radical new ideas.Over the past five years, we have witnessed an incredible convergence of ideas, tools, and computing power. This arrangement opens up our understanding of the universe in previously unimaginable ways. My own work focuses on new ideas surrounding big cosmic questions, such as why are we here and how did we get here? I am not talking about the psychology of existence, but about the physical universe. How is it enabled? How did the universe exist as it unfolded? These big, tantalizing, and exciting questions are what drive me forward. My mind was driven by a detective’s curiosity, trying to find answers through clues. Many times we lack direct data and we must infer from indirect data what is really going on in physics. But we are lucky to be firmly rooted in this pursuit with universal laws of physics. In this era of artificial intelligence, we are fortunate to have the unique advantage of the laws of physics, which provide a strict order to guide and verify machine learning, ensuring that our computational leaps are always grounded in universal truths.Please share some milestones in your journey, especially from India to the United States. I am extremely grateful for many opportunities and conditions that I had absolutely no hand in. I had the great advantage of being born into a home full of books, where learning was encouraged and children’s curiosity was admired. I had a lot of support from my parents to do what I wanted to do. They are academics, but not in science. My father trained as a civil engineer and then went into engineering education. My mother is a sociologist. My parents worked in Delhi and I grew up there. My parents’ home was an intellectual “salon” where scientists, artists, writers, poets and all kinds of people would gather. I am honored to grow up in this huge social circle and I have the right to dream and soar. And then there are the serendipitous discoveries—you meet people, mentors, and teachers who change your life in some way. It was very rare to come to the United States from India for undergraduate studies at that time, and I had to get a full scholarship. I got into several top places on scholarships and full scholarships. I chose MIT because of their Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program. Once a door opened for me, I was in a different orbit. Looking back, I had some personal qualities, such as strong mental discipline. and focus. And ambition – but what drives my ambition is something very innocent and childish. It’s a joy to figure things out. I was always that kid who tried to solve a problem three different ways to understand myself better. In our educational environment, childlike joy is often stifled by the years you spend in school. But I’m lucky that at my age I still have that – I’m in my 50s now. This is what drives my work. The main challenge for me is how to remain a lifelong learner without letting what I don’t know scare me. To this day, I view every scientific paper I write as a learning exercise. This journey is about refusing to be marginalized by setbacks and instead turning those challenges into something positive.I’m lucky enough to work in an environment that pushes me into new orbits. The first was MIT; the second was Cambridge University, where I studied at the Institute of Astronomy at Trinity College. Immersed in this tremendous legacy, I made the most of every opportunity. In 1997 I was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, the first woman to do so in astrophysics. These years were transformative, not only for my PhD but for my growth as an interdisciplinary thinker. The exchange of ideas with different fields is what truly gives me a “lifeblood”. This momentum eventually led me to a faculty position at Yale University, a position I secured even before I had to defend my doctoral thesis.I think one of the most precious things for a scientist like me is to come up with a completely new idea and work on taking that abstract idea to the point where it can be directly compared to observational data, whether it’s correct or not. I feel very lucky that over the past five years many of the ideas I have come up with have actually been validated. This is the dream of scientists, to complete the entire cycle in their own lifetime. How do you balance your mentoring role with your research role?This is very tricky. I wasn’t particularly interested in an administrative career, I really wanted to be able to research, teach and mentor. Now as department chair, I have a lot of responsibilities, which I sometimes find overwhelming. It requires a lot of intention and thoughtful planning and prioritization. I’ve learned how to do it well over time, but it’s still very challenging. I think one of the advantages is that my home life has no demands. So that frees me up to live a spiritual life. This is helpful. What is your professional and personal connection to India?My mother and brother are in India; I lost my father a few years ago. So I always had a very strong connection with India. I come from a middle class Tamil Brahmin family and I am still very traditional. I think we imbibed the wonderful values ​​of growing up in Indian families and understanding the power of intergenerational connections. I was lucky enough to have spent my formative years in India and I inherited all these values. In terms of professional relationships, I do not have many Indian collaborators in my field of work; but I am a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Ashoka University. I don’t have many deep-rooted connections professionally because I didn’t study in India other than school. I’m always thinking about what I can do to give back and do whatever I can. I did a lot of public speaking and met with young aspiring students. I have a lot of Indian students coming to work with me. But I think what’s most concerning to me is that when I was growing up, the scientific research environment in India was really marked by resource scarcity. Now we have become wealthy. I think we should invest more in basic scientific research. But I think the shift that has occurred is demand.