Priyamvada Natarajan, the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor and Chair of Astronomy and professor of physics in FAS, has been named to New India Abroad’s inaugural “Impact 100” list of influential Indian Americans.
The list includes such notables as World Bank President Ajay Banga, astronaut Sunita Williams, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, actress and producer Mindy Kaling, wellness advocate Deepak Chopra, and YouTube CEO Neal Mohan.
The editors of New India Abroad — a digital publication that aims to inform the global Indian diaspora — noted that the honorees were “selected not for visibility alone, but for impact — the ability to influence systems, shift conversations, and open doors for others. … What unites them is a shared commitment to excellence, public service, and a sense of responsibility to the communities they touch.”
Last year, Natarajan received the prestigious Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, awarded by the American Astronomical Society and the American Institute of Physics, for her groundbreaking research. Her work focuses on the formation, feeding, and feedback from black holes and their relationship to their host galaxies in the earliest stages of the universe, and her groundbreaking theories are now being validated by a new generation of powerful space telescopes.