Question: Hi how did you find out that you are intrigued in black holes out of all of the things in space?

Stephanie Buttigieg answered on 5 Jul 2025:

There are a lot of things in space that I find interesting. In fact, I first started doing cosmology, which focuses on understanding how the whole universe started and how it evolves; nothing to do with black holes.

Then, in the summer before starting my PhD, there was a big result published relating to supermassive black hole mergers and I thought it was insanely cool. When I started my PhD, I still had to choose what to work on and one of the things that came up related to this big result I was super excited about so I decided to do that. I knew almost nothing about supermassive black holes, but the more I read, the more I realised how cool these objects are!