Priya Natarajan, Professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale University. She is a theoretical astrophysicist interested in cosmology, gravitational lensing and black hole physics. She was on leave from Yale to take up her Guggenheim Fellowship during the academic year (2010 – 2011). She was a JILA Fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder in September and October, 2010. From November, 2010 onwards she was a visiting professor at the Institute for Theory and Computation at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. She was also enrolled as a graduate student in the Spring (2011) at the Program in Science, Technology and Society at MIT. She was a fellow at the Rockefeller Bellagio Center in Italy during May-June 2011.

Priyamvada was the Director of Graduate Studies for the Department of Astronomy at Yale during the academic years 2009-2010 and 2007-2008 and will be the Director for Graduate Studies for Admissions in 2011-2012.

Priya has undergraduate degrees in Physics and Mathematics from M.I.T. She is also interested in the history and philosophy of science as well as technology and public policy. She is the Caroline Herschel Distinguished Visitor at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore for 2011-2012. Priya was recently awarded a Master’s Degree (S.M.) from MIT’s Program in Science, Technology and Society. Along with Denys Turner and Michael della Rocca, Priya organized an inter-disciplinary conference at Yale titled Why is there anything in the Universe? that was held at the Greenberg Center from October 6 – 9, 2011.