Hyderabad-born researcher Dr Mugdha on a quest to uncover black holes in tiny galaxies
Born in India and raised in UAE, the young astrophysicist turned a childhood fascination with the night sky into research on hidden black holes
By P Nagarjuna Rao
Hyderabad: Dr Mugdha Polimera spends her days searching for what most of us can never see: black holes. An astrophysicist, software engineer and AI researcher, she is part of a new generation of scientists reshaping our understanding of how galaxies evolve and how cosmic giants come into being.
At NASA’s Astrophysics Data Systems (ADS), she is building next-generation tools that help astronomers worldwide keep up with the constant deluge of scientific papers and related materials.
Childhood wonder becomes science
Her journey to the stars began far from the laboratories of the US. Born in Hyderabad, educated in BITS-Pilani Dubai, and raised in Abu Dhabi, Mugdha grew up under desert skies, where her father often told her stories about constellations and Indian traditions of astronomy.
Finding black holes in unlikely places
Those stories, half myth and half science, lit up her imagination. What began as childhood infatuation with the night sky gradually transformed into a career dedicated to uncovering its deepest mysteries.
Mugdha’s most celebrated breakthrough came during her doctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her team discovered that dwarf galaxies – the small, faint cousins of galaxies like our Milky Way – host many more black holes than anyone had realised.
‘Almost all of them were overlooked,’ she explains. ‘Their signals were mistaken for high-energy stars. But when we looked again with different techniques, it became clear these were real, growing black holes hiding in plain sight.’
The discovery matters because large galaxies such as the Milky Way are thought to have formed by merging thousands of dwarf galaxies. If those dwarfs carried hidden black holes, then the supermassive black hole at the centre of our own galaxy may have grown by feeding on them.
Mugdha’s work, published to global attention, shed light on how cosmic heavyweights get their start. This new technique is now used by astronomers across the world to find even more black holes in tiny galaxies.
The detective work of astronomy
Since black holes themselves are invisible, astronomers search for the glowing rings of gas that heat up as they spiral inward. But the glow from star formation can look deceptively similar.
To solve this puzzle, Mugdha and her colleagues turned to data across multiple wavelengths – optical, X-ray, infrared – and used advanced computational modelling to rule out false leads. ‘It felt like detective work,’ she says, ‘sorting through the evidence until the real culprits revealed themselves.’
Bringing AI into the cosmos
Alongside her discoveries about black holes, Mugdha is helping transform the infrastructure of modern science itself. At the NASA-funded ADS, hosted at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, she works on cutting-edge research platforms that allow scientists to navigate the overwhelming flood of scientific papers, data, and software.
For over 30 years, ADS has been the backbone of astronomy research. Now, with even more NASA-backing, the team is building the new Science Explorer platform, expanding beyond astrophysics to serve the entire Earth and space science community – from planetary science and heliophysics to climate research, agriculture, environmental studies, geology, and more.
These tools are freely available worldwide and have already been shown to increase research efficiency by more than five per cent annually.
Meeting real-world needs
Mugdha’s role bridges technical innovation, scientific expertise, and strategic vision. She builds data pipelines and AI-powered systems, from natural language processing to large language models and smarter search algorithms, that transform raw information into structured and discoverable knowledge.
At the same time, she leads workshops, writes papers and proposals, and works closely with scientists to ensure these platforms meet real-world needs. She helps shape how pilot features can evolve into full-scale products that benefit research communities.
As she puts it, ‘We’re not just building better search engines. We’re creating the research infrastructure of the future so scientists can spend less time untangling information, and more time making discoveries.’
Curiosity as the driving force
Asked what sustains her in a field where answers are often galaxies away, Mugdha says: ‘The universe is always more surprising than we imagine. The hidden black holes were right there, overlooked for years, until we changed how we looked. That keeps me curious.’
From Hyderabad to Abu Dhabi, from desert stargazing to powerful telescopes like SOAR and Gemini, the path has been long. But the fascination that began in childhood has never dimmed.
A star among stars
Her PhD adviser Prof Sheila Kannappan put it simply: ‘The black holes Mugdha has found are the building blocks of supermassive black holes like the one in our own Milky Way. There’s so much more we want to learn about them.’
For Mugdha, the quest is far from over. ‘We’ve only scratched the surface,’ she says. ‘There’s a universe of questions waiting to be answered.’
That pursuit of solving cosmic mysteries and building the digital infrastructure to help others do the same is what sets her apart. The young girl who once listened to her father’s stories under Abu Dhabi’s skies is now charting galaxies while also rewiring the very way science explores them.
Mugdha’s parents, Sunil and Gayathri, have since returned to India and now live in the quiet surroundings of Kowkoor, Bolarum.
(Author is a Senior Journalist based in Hyderabad)
