C– to NASA: A scientist’s black-hole detour

Erini Lambrides says a C– in her first college physics class didn’t end her path—it pushed her to learn, lean on mentorship, and ultimately study supermassive black holes at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

On the surface, Erini Lambrides’ story sounds like the kind of academic stumble that sends people packing. In her first college physics class—an honors course—she earned a C–. She didn’t just feel unprepared. She assumed something about herself was the problem.

But she didn’t switch out of physics. The grade became a turning point rather than a verdict. Today. Lambrides is a postdoctoral fellow at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and is also affiliated with the University of Maryland. College Park—where she studies black holes. including how the earliest massive ones shaped their galaxies.

The episode is part of “The Young American Scientists,” an editorially independent project produced with financial support from Regeneron. Lambrides’ conversation—recorded for Scientific American’s “Science Quickly” and led by host Rachel Feltman—traces a path that begins with Brooklyn. detours through acting training and science fiction. and ends in the deep. observational work of astrophysics.

Lambrides grew up in New York City, born and raised in Brooklyn. In high school, she attended LaGuardia School for the performing arts—Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts—where she studied acting. She described a moment that pulled her in a direction she hadn’t planned: walking through the school library and finding “A Brief History of Time.” She checked it out almost as a joke. then read it on her train commute. saying the book “rocked my world.”.

She didn’t have a clear roadmap to astrophysics at first. She said the first time she heard the word “astrophysics” was in “Top Gun,” because Tom Cruise’s character, the love lead, was an astrophysicist. The idea sounded like “space,” so she told people she wanted to do it.

Her college start was unusually abrupt. She applied to one college—University of Rochester. she said was “pretty random”—and majored in physics without ever taking a physics class before. or calculus. “Sheer will,” she called it. And when she finally got into the work, she discovered she liked it—especially after research entered the picture.

Still, the first physics class nearly derailed the confidence she’d walked in with. Lambrides said she did “horrific” in that first honors majors physics course. largely because she didn’t realize other students had already taken physics. including through AP physics. and often had tutors. She described feeling like everyone else had a head start. while she arrived with pop science books and the ambition of a girl from Brooklyn.

Then came the shift that changed everything. During her first two years. she said physics felt like “a lot of review” for most people. while for her it was brand new. She was “drowning” at first, but she learned how to swim. By her third and fourth years. she said she built the muscle to handle advanced courses when material was completely out of depth—no longer something she had to start from scratch.

Around the same time, her research began. She said it initially wasn’t even space research. It was inertial confinement fusion. From there, her focus moved toward the kind of questions that now occupy her at NASA: how black holes got so big and what their place is in the universe.

When Feltman asked what drew her most deeply to astrophysics, Lambrides pointed to the scale. The subject is defined by sizes and distances far beyond everyday intuition. she said. which requires an act of will just to relate. She also said she was struck by how much remains unresolved. If humans ended up being exactly right about how the universe works. she added. that would be “kinda lame”—a sentiment she offered as both a personal view and a scientist’s instinct toward discovery.

She also laid out why she sees a link between the physics she does and the broader human stakes of curiosity. She said the central black hole in the Milky Way is Sagittarius A*. and that if it were removed. nothing in daily life would noticeably change. The gravity is simply out of our reach. Yet the relationships it represents matter—because for decades. observations of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies have revealed connections that suggest the growth of a galaxy and the growth of its central black hole are coupled. despite their very different scales.

For Lambrides. the question is what comes first: what the earliest massive black holes looked like. what their galaxies looked like. and how the relationship begins. A major part of her work. she said. is piecing together those early conditions by using data across the electromagnetic spectrum—drawing on “all of NASA’s flagship telescopes and then some.”.

In the past couple of years. she said she “stumbled into little red dots.” With the James Webb Space Telescope—NASA’s newest flagship telescope—astronomers initially mistook these sources for galaxies. The early excitement came with the claim that they might represent an unexpectedly large population of very early galaxies. Lambrides said the interpretation shifted toward the possibility that the sources are being powered by growing supermassive black holes. Her research. she said. has been focused on understanding what these little red dots are doing: how similar they are to other growing supermassive black holes. how they differ. and how to incorporate them into a coherent picture.

In a conversation that doubled as a lesson on why careers don’t always follow straight lines. Feltman pressed Lambrides about the experience of getting a C. Feltman said she remembers thinking that a C meant she wasn’t good enough and that the time had come to find a new focus—something Lambrides said is common among students. and not necessarily predictive.

Lambrides framed it as an issue of information. She said grades like a C are “not very informative” about who will become a great researcher. What does matter, she said, is whether someone keeps returning despite not initially doing well—choosing to try again.

She described what she called a different kind of training: acting. In auditions, she explained, rejection is built into the process. Being told “no” can feel like you weren’t the right fit for a specific role. rather than proof that you can’t succeed. When she moved into academia’s gatekeeping—admission to graduate school. fellowships. research grants—she arrived already carrying what she called “this callus of rejections.” That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. she said. but it did prepare her for the realities of “yes’s or no’s.”.

It was also, she said, a reason she now teaches with more skepticism about initial judgments. She said she uses her own experience to question whose chances are being limited and who receives “benefits of the doubt,” including by asking what students look like and what backgrounds they come from.

Her comments on teaching and mentoring led into a broader view of how she works. Lambrides described a habit of not accepting authority just because someone says something is true—especially with little red dots, where, she said, there is “a lot of confidence” and yet understanding remains early.

She also said she borrows from unrelated subfields. One example she gave: learning from papers from the 1980s or 1990s that had been overlooked. then applying their approach to new problems with brand-new data. She connected that mindset to her earlier training in acting—saying she developed the ability to communicate complex ideas. turn jargon into something a listener can follow. and carry that skill into science.

Community, she said, has been just as crucial as individual drive. She pointed to the idea that objectivity is impossible because humans run science, not machines. It’s a goal. she said. but every decision—including how experiments are set up and how results are interpreted—passes through human judgment. She urged that great science cannot happen in isolation and described collaboration as what has helped her through both hard periods scientifically and personally.

Feltman asked for advice for early-career scientists and young people who want to enter science but don’t know where to begin. Lambrides’ answer centered on mentorship and networks. She said she founded a program called NASA-PEER at NASA Goddard and that it was one of the ways she found community at NASA—by connecting early-career researchers and supporting mentorship and applications to graduate school.

At NASA-PEER, she described a tenet: mentorship should not be built around a single person. Instead, she said, different mentors help with different needs—identity and navigating academia, discipline-specific guidance, and career options. She also said that. at least in astrophysics. whether someone makes it from point A to point B is often determined by how good their mentorship is and how early they get it.

She added that passion matters, too. Over time. she said. doing something becomes part of identity. and it can be hard to tell whether someone is driven by love for the question or by the social clout that can come with being seen as smart. She described her parents’ confusion as she moved from competitive arts into competitive academic spaces. and said they encouraged her to be strategic even while fighting for her dreams.

For Lambrides. the C– grade wasn’t a sign to stop; it was a signal to keep learning and to build support systems strong enough to outlast early failure. And for the black holes she studies now—especially the “little red dots” that may reveal more about early supermassive growth than scientists first expected—the message is the same: first impressions can be wrong. and understanding takes persistence.

NASA Goddard Erini Lambrides astrophysics black holes James Webb Space Telescope little red dots supermassive black holes inertial confinement fusion NASA-PEER mentorship