Priyamvada Natarajan, who is an astrophysicist and Professor in the Departments of Astronomy and Physics at Yale is among the new class of AAAS fellows which includes 506 scientists, innovators and engineers from 24 disciplines who are being recognized for their scientifically and socially distinguished achievements.

Priyamvada Natarajan is the Joseph S. and Sophia S. Fruton Professor of Astronomy and Professor of Physics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Chair of the Department of Astronomy, and Director of the Franke Program in Science and the Humanities at Yale. A faculty member at Yale since 2000, Natarajan has made seminal contributions to the understanding of the coupling of the visible and dark universe: the formation, fueling, feedback, and assembly history of supermassive black holes in their larger scale cosmic context and mapping dark matter substructure in clusters of galaxies. Her research has focused on confronting and testing theoretical ideas with observational data in astrophysics.

The new fellows will receive a certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin (representing science and engineering, respectively) to commemorate their election and will be celebrated in Washington, D.C., later this year.