Summary: While in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Neil spent an afternoon talking cosmology at the apartment of the theoretical astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan. Priya Natarajan is a Professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University. Her research is focused on exotica in the Universe – dark matter, dark energy and black holes. She is noted for her key contributions to two of the most challenging problems in cosmology: mapping the distribution of dark matter and tracing the growth history of black holes. Her work using gravitational lensing has provided a deeper understanding of the granularity of dark matter in clusters of galaxies and offers a novel way to unravel the nature of dark matter. Priya also works on the assembly and accretion history of black holes. She is currently exploring a new channel for the formation of the first black holes and its observational consequences at high and low redshift. Priya is the current chair of the Womens Faculty Forum (WFF) at Yale, and is deeply interested in Gender Parity issues in the Academy. Previously Priya was the Emeline Bigelow Conland Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and was the first woman in Astrophysics to be elected a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. She also holds the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Professorship at the Dark Center, Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.
