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![\"Hyderabad-born](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Mugdha-Polimera.jpg\")
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\n Dr Mugdha Polimera with her proud parents Gayathri and Sunil. <\/p>\n
Born in India and raised in UAE, the young astrophysicist turned a childhood fascination with the night sky into research on hidden black holes<\/p>\n
Updated On – 29 September 2025, 08:07 PM<\/p>\n
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\n Dr Mugdha Polimera with her proud parents Gayathri and Sunil.
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By P Nagarjuna Rao<\/strong><\/p>\n Hyderabad:<\/strong> Dr Mugdha Polimera spends her days searching for what most of us can never see: black holes<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n At NASA\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n Childhood wonder becomes science<\/strong><\/p>\n Her journey to the stars began far from the laboratories of the US. Born in Hyderabad, educated in BITS-Pilani<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Finding black holes in unlikely places<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Mugdha\u2019s most celebrated breakthrough came during her doctoral research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her team discovered that dwarf galaxies \u2013 the small, faint cousins of galaxies like our Milky Way<\/a> \u2013 host many more black holes than anyone had realised.<\/p>\n \u2018Almost all of them were overlooked,\u2019 she explains. \u2018Their 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.\u2019<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Mugdha\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n The detective work of astronomy<\/strong><\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n To solve this puzzle, Mugdha and her colleagues turned to data across multiple wavelengths \u2013 optical, X-ray, infrared \u2013 and used advanced computational modelling to rule out false leads. \u2018It felt like detective work,\u2019 she says, \u2018sorting through the evidence until the real culprits revealed themselves.\u2019<\/p>\n