Giant black holes that inhabit the centres of galaxies are the most massive objects we know. We are able to spot these black holes to the far reaches of the universe if and when they accrete matter and grow, becoming the most luminous objects we know. Such accretion is likely also what causes them to impact their environments out to spatial scales that are well beyond their gravitational sphere of influence. In this talk, I will discuss the various strands of the story of these discoveries. 

Professor Prajval Shastri is an astrophysicist of over four decades. She investigates the physics of giant black holes that are found in the centres of distant galaxies using telescopes at multiple frequencies based on Earth as well as in space. She got her PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and after post-doctoral research positions in the University of Texas at Austin, University of California at Berkeley and the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, she was a faculty of the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, for 23 years. She has been a Fulbright fellow at Stanford University, Senior Associate at TIFR-ICTS, Senior Fellow at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), Australia and Emeritus Scientist at the Raman Research Institute. She is currently an Adjunct Professor, ICRAR. She is extremely passionate about public engagement with science. She believes that the cultivation of scientific thinking is for everyone, uses astrophysics as a vehicle to engage lay audiences of all ages with these questions in multiple languages, and works for the people's science movement towards this goal.  She is also deeply concerned about the inequities in the sciences and attempts to bring an intersectional lens to the endeavours to mitigate them. She is the founder and past chair of the Gender in Physics Working Group of the Indian Physics Association and a past member of the Working Group for Gender Equity of the Astronomical Society of India. She is Chair of the Women in Physics Working Group of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics, past  Vice-Chair of the Executive Committee for the International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development and currently on the Steering Committee of the Earth-Humanity Coalition for IDSSD.  In addition to her research publications and popular articles on astrophysics, her published work includes writings on gender inequity as well as science and society.