Natalie Batalha

Natalie Batalha was a science lead on NASA’s Kepler mission, which revealed a staggering diversity of planets beyond the solar system. A professor of astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, Batalha uses the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes to identify planets suitable for atmospheric studies with the Webb Space Telescope. She is building an Astrobiology program at UCSC and was named by Time Magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2017.