[2][3][4] The California Institute of Technology, which hired Bouman as an assistant professor in June 2019, awarded her a named professorship in 2020.

[1][16][17] After earning her doctorate, Bouman joined Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow on the Event Horizon Telescope Imaging team.

[27] Her group is analyzing the Event Horizon Telescope's images to learn more about general relativity in a strong gravitational field.

[28] Bouman received significant media attention after a photo, showing her reaction to the detection of the black hole shadow in the EHT images, went viral.

[32][33] However, Bouman herself repeatedly noted that the result came from the work of a large collaboration, showing the importance of teamwork in science.

[2][33][34] Bouman also became the target of online harassment, to the extent that her colleague Andrew Chael made a statement on Twitter criticizing "awful and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend", including attempts to undermine her contributions by crediting him solely with work accomplished by the team.