Aparna Venkatesan

Aparna Venkatesan is an astronomer in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of San Francisco. She works on the first stars and quasars in the universe, and on cultural astronomy and space policy projects. Dr. Venkatesan has been recognized internationally for her research and leadership, featured widely in the media, and received numerous prizes and awards. She is deeply committed to developing the future workforce of astronomy and STEM, and is active in developing co-created scientific partnerships with Indigenous communities worldwide. Dr. Venkatesan has worked with nearly two dozen USF undergraduates on award-winning projects, with over half those students going onto STEM careers.

In recent years, Dr. Venkatesan has been leading work in dark-sky advocacy and developing protections for darkness and space as an environment for science, sky traditions, language and heritage. She created the neologism "noctalgia" in 2023 with Dr. John Barentine to express “sky grief” for the accelerating loss of the home environment of our shared skies. Since then, noctalgia has struck an interdisciplinary chord globally, generating numerous international art exhibits commemorating dark skies, dozens of media, book and podcast mentions, poetry, musical compositions in popular and black metal genres, craft beer, a new sign created in British Sign Language, and more. With Dr. Barentine and colleagues, Dr. Venkatesan co-founded the Center for Space Environmentalism in 2025 to support academic inquiry and social advocacy focused on the protection of the space environment.

Dr. Venkatesan has spoken widely at conferences, K-12 schools, universities and institutes worldwide, regional astronomical societies, and organizations ranging from the United Nations to the National Academy of Sciences and federal agencies. Ongoing interdisciplinary collaborations with artists, musicians and documentarians include projects with Julia Goodman, Jessica Bardsley,  Elena Park, Christopher Allen, Phil Moffa and Fourth Wall Ensemble, Enrico Ventrice, and Bethan Maddocks.

• Cosmology
• Cultural astronomy
• Dark sky advocacy
• Impacts of satellite constellations
• STEM partnerships with indigenous communities, indigenous knowledge

• Cosmology (First stars and quasars, earliest galaxies, cosmic reionization)
• Space policy and impacts of satellite constellations
• Space environmentalism and legal-policy protections
• Cultural astronomy
• Indigenous knowledge

• Co-founder of the Center for Space Environmentalism, spring 2025

• Co-Chair of the American Astronomical Society Committee for the Protection of Astronomy and the Space Environment (AAS COMPASSE; spring 2022 - summer 2025). Continuing as past co-Chair of COMPASSE, 2025-26

• Co-Director of the Tracy Seeley Center for Teaching Excellence (Jan. 2022 - May 2025)

• Advisor for the 2023-25 NSF-funded project The Cultural Roots of STEM: A Synthesis of Non-Western STEM Learning Paradigms

• Member of the AAS Committee for the Status of Minorities in Astronomy (2015–19), and the AAS Committee for the Status of Women in Astronomy (2016–19, co-Chair for 2016–17)

• MS and PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago
• BA in Astronomy, Cornell University

• Postdoctoral Research Associate and NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Colorado, Boulder

• KITP Fellow, Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics, UC Santa Barbara (2025-26)
• USF/USF Full-time Faculty Association Distinguished Research Award for outstanding research contributions to an academic discipline (2024)
• USF Post-sabbatical merit award for exceptional productivity in research over sabbatical year (awarded in 2023 for 2019-20)
• Lead USF Faculty Member in 22-institution consortium, The Undergraduate ALFALFA Team (UAT), awarded three 3-year NSF collaborative grants (2021–2024, 2016– 2019 and 2012–2015)
• Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar (2018) and Cottrell College Science Award (2010-13)
• University of San Francisco Awards: Arthur Furst Award (2018), Co-recipient of the College of Arts and Sciences Collective Achievement Award for Supporting Women in STEM Fields (2018), Dean's Scholar Award (2013), and Jesuit Foundation Grant (2012)

Space Environmentalism:

• J. C. Barentine & A. Venkatesan 2026, The Outer Space Treaty won’t save us from ourselves, Frontiers in Space Technologies, 7:1748406

• Center for Space Environmentalism Manifesto, 2026

• "Let's Protect our Skies", Autumn 2025 issue of UK-based magazine The New Humanist

• D. Zartner, A. Venkatesan & J. C. Barentine 2025, The Right to the Night: New Legal Advocacy Strategies to Address Terrestrial Light Pollution, ENVIRONS (biannual environmental law and policy journal at the UC Davis School of Law)

• A. Venkatesan & J. C. Barentine 2024, The next chapter of lunar exploration could forever change the moon — and our relationship to it, Op-Ed in Space.com

• A. Venkatesan 2023, Stewardship of space as shared environment and heritage

• J. Barentine et al 2023, Aggregate effects of proliferating LEO objects and implications for astronomical data lost in the noise.

Indigenous Knowledge and Indigenous Rights:

• Meza, Venkatesan & Barentine 2025, Impacts of Rising Light Pollution on Pollinators and Indigenous Food Sovereignty, Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society

• Translation project co-manager and Introduction co-author for "NIK The Maya Zero: The Mathematics, Culture and Philosophy of Maya Numerals", 2025, Spanish and English editions from Guatemala-based publisher Cholsamaj.

• A. Meza & A. Venkatesan 2024, Improving Accessibility in Astronomy and with the Skies, AstroBeat

• Vidaurri, M. et al. 2024, A call for Indigenous partnership in the return to the Moon, Nature Astronomy, 8, 400-402. 

• A. Venkatesan et al. 2020, Invited Perspective in Nature Astronomy, The Impact of Satellite Constellations on Space as an Ancestral Global Commons, 4, 1043–1048

Cosmology:

• L. Y. Aaron Yung et al. 2021, Semi-analytic forecasts for JWST - V. AGN luminosity functions and helium reionization at z = 2–7, MNRAS, 508, 2706-2729

• L. Y. Aaron Yung et al. 2020, Semi-analytic forecasts for JWST - IV. Implications for cosmic reionization and LyC escape fraction, MNRAS, 496, 4574-92

• "Under attack: How humanity is losing the night sky," Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2025

• "Take back the night: Establishing a "right to darkness" could save our night skies," Salon.com, 2025

• "Erasing the stars: Satellite megaconstellations are a mega problem for Earth and sky," Salon.com, 2025

• "Wie im Wilden Westen (Like the Wild West)," Die Tageszeitung (Taz, Germany), 2025

• "Horizon Shift," UK-based biannual media magazine Beyond Noise, 2025

• "All the light we would rather not see", Washington Post editorial, 2024
• "The remote Argentinean community that is saving the stars," BBC, 2024.
• "Astronomers are worried about this satellite that’s brighter than most stars," The Washington Post, 2023.
• "Video captures parade of Starlink satellites," National Geographic, 2023.
• "Amazon Is Going to Fill the Sky With Satellites. Astronomers Aren’t Happy," WIRED Magazine, 2023.
• "A new international space race is on — and it could junk up our pristine moon," Vox, 2023.
• "The loss of dark skies is so painful, astronomers coined a new term for it," Space.com, 2023.

Recent Podcasts

Noctalgia:

• Nocturne Podcast (2024).
• KALW (2024).
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation show The Current (2023).

Satellite Constellations:

• Der Spiegel (2025).
• Das Wissen (2023).
• The Economist (2022).

Space Environmentalism:

• Nocturne (2025).
• Green Dreamer (2023).
• Restoring Darkness (2023).
• USF student-led Fog Pod (2023).