On the precipice of fundamental shift in scientific method, with AI, says Yale astrophysicist Priya Natarajan | India News
Priyambada (Priya) Natarajan A prominent astrophysicist and the inaugural Joseph S. and Sophia S. Frutton is a professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University. He also serves as an external principal investigator at Harvard’s Black Hole Initiative. Professor Natarajan has made significant contributions to our understanding of the cosmos, particularly dark matter and supermassive black holes. A respected figure in the scientific community, his honors include the 2022 Liberty Science Center Genius Award and the prestigious 2025 Danny Heinemann Prize in Astrophysics. In 2024, he was named to the TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people. A member of the Yale faculty since 2000, Professor Natarajan serves as Principal Advisor. NASANational Science Foundation (NSF), and Department of Energy (DoE). During a recent visit to Bengaluru for the Indiaspora Forum – a gathering of Indian leaders from around the world – he sat down with Ishani Dattagupta To discuss his enduring relationship with India, the transformative role of AI in astrophysics and the future of cosmic exploration. Below are edited portions of their conversation.Many students from India are going to the US for higher education, especially in science. Are there any challenges that they face? The growing pressure on the US science and technology research funding system is deeply concerning. For decades, the research model that has worked really well in the United States has been federal funding for basic science, supporting graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. It fosters a unique ecosystem of intense mentoring and skill-building anchored by well-resourced universities and faculties engaged in cutting-edge research. The influx of international students was crucial to keep such an engine going. As funding shrinks, the US may lose its status as a prime destination and not look attractive to the world’s brightest young people. I think it’s a concern. Also, there is a fundamental transformation in the research landscape driven by AI, which is both exciting and unknown. While the initial ‘LLM revolution’ in AI catered to specific commercial use cases, it also required changes based on research. And universities have left research into this kind of cutting-edge AI to the corporate sector because of the massive need for computation. However, as we move towards ‘AI for science’ — where the short-term financial returns may not be very clear — intellectual tasks may be concentrated in universities. These are the major uncertainties. Despite some skepticism that I have seen among some of my colleagues, we are on the verge of a fundamental change in the scientific method with AI. Ultimately what really matters is achieving breakthroughs that constitute truly ‘good science’.As a distinguished scholar in the field of astrophysics, please provide an overview of the most significant paradigm shifts and technological advances currently reshaping our understanding of the cosmos?Astrophysics is the original ‘big data’ science. Since the first systematic mapping of the entire night sky in the 1920s and 30s, the field has evolved from physical photographic plates to vast digitized datasets. This is a discipline where discovery is technology-intensive, with massive computing and better cameras. And the new instruments don’t just provide better vision—they give rise to radically new ideas.In the past five years, we have witnessed an amazing convergence of ideas, tools and computational power. This alignment has opened up our understanding of the cosmos in previously unimagined ways. My own work focuses on new ideas around big cosmological questions such as why are we here and how did we get here? And I’m not talking about the psychology of being, but I’m talking about the material universe. How is it activated? How does the universe exist, as it unfolds, the way it is? That’s what drives me, those big, tantalizing and exciting questions. My mind runs like a curious detective trying to figure out the clues. Many times we lack direct data and have to infer from indirect data what is actually happening in terms of physics. But we are fortunate to be firmly anchored in this pursuit by the universal laws of physics. In this age of AI, we are fortunate to have the unique advantage of the laws of physics providing a rigorous mandate to guide and validate machine learning, so that our computational leaps are based on universal truth.Please share some milestones of your journey, especially the India to US journey. I am extremely grateful for many opportunities and conditions that I had no hand in One of my great advantages was being born into a house full of books where learning was encouraged and curiosity in a child was admired. I got a lot of support from both my parents to do what I want. They were academics, though not in science. My father trained as a civil engineer and then moved into engineering education. My mother is a sociologist. My parents worked in Delhi and I grew up there. My parents’ house was an intellectual ‘salon’ where all sorts of people gathered, including scientists, artists, writers and poets. I was very privileged to grow up in this huge social circle, I was allowed to dream and fly. And then there’s serendipity – you meet people who change your life in some way, mentors and teachers. Going from India to the US as a graduate was very rare at that time and I had to get a full scholarship. I have risen to several top positions, including fellowships and fully paid studentships. I chose MIT because they had a graduate research opportunities program. Once a big door opened for me it took me to a different orbit. Looking back, I have some personal qualities such as great mental discipline. and focus. And there is ambition – but what drives my ambition is something very innocent and childish. It’s the joy of finding things out. I was always that kid who would try to solve a problem three different ways, to better understand myself. Too often in our educational landscape, that childlike joy is lost during the years you spend in school. But I’m very lucky that I still have that, at my age – I’m over 50 now. And that is the motivation of my work. For me, the central challenge is how to be a lifelong learner without letting the scale of 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 get sidetracked by disappointment and instead turning those challenges into something positive.I was fortunate to work in an environment that pushed me into new orbits. The first was MIT; The second was the University of Cambridge, where I studied at the Institute of Astronomy at Trinity College. Immersed in that huge legacy, I took full advantage of every opportunity. In 1997, I was elected a Fellow of Trinity College – the first woman in astrophysics to achieve this distinction. These years were transformative not only for my PhD, but for my growth as an interdisciplinary thinker. Engaging the mind across different fields is what really gives me the ‘juice of life’. This momentum eventually led to a faculty position at Yale University, which I secured even before I defended my PhD thesis.I think one of the most cherished things for a scientist like me is to propose a brand new idea and work over the full arc to bring an abstract kind of idea to a place where you can directly compare it with observational data to see if it’s correct. I feel very fortunate that in the last five years, I have had many ideas that I have proposed to be validated in practice This is what a scientist dreams of completing the entire cycle in his lifetime. How do you balance between your consulting role and your research role?It is very difficult. I am not particularly interested in an administrative career and I really want to be able to do research and teaching and consulting. And now as department chair I have a lot of responsibilities and sometimes I find that taxing. It requires a lot of will and deliberate planning and prioritization. I’ve learned over time how to do it better, but it’s still very challenging. I think one advantage is that I have no demands from my home life. So freed me to live the life of the mind. And that helps. How are you connected to India professionally and personally?My mother and brothers are in India; I lost my father a couple of years ago. And, therefore, I have always maintained a very strong relationship with India. I come from a middle class Tamil Brahmin family and I am still very traditional. I think we imbibe wonderful values growing up in Indian families and understanding the power of intergenerational connections. I am very lucky that my formative years were in India and I carry all those values. In terms of professional connections, I don’t have many Indian colleagues in the area where I work; But I am on the Science Advisory Board of Ashoka University. I don’t have many professional deep-rooted connections because I haven’t studied in India, except in school. I thought a lot about what I could do to give back and try to do what I could. I give many public lectures and meet young aspiring students. Many Indian students came to work with me. But I think what was great for me to see was, when I was growing up, the scientific research environment in India was really characterized by a lack of resources. Now we come to abundance. I think we should spend more on basic basic science research. But I think the transformation that has happened is demand.
