Natalie M. Batalha (born 1966) is professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at

UC Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge of ...

. Previously she was a research astronomer in the Space Sciences Division of

NASA Ames Research Center The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) laborat ...

and held the position of Co-Investigator and Kepler Mission Scientist on the

Kepler Mission The Kepler space telescope is a disused space telescope launched by NASA in 2009 to discover Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars. Named after astronomer Johannes Kepler, the spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orb ...

, the first mission capable of finding Earth-size planets around other stars.

Biography

Batalha grew up in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

, and attended the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

. Though she started out as a business major, she switched to physics after learning that everyday occurrences like

thin-film interference Thin-film interference is a natural phenomenon in which light waves reflected by the upper and lower boundaries of a thin film interfere with one another, either enhancing or reducing the reflected light. When the thickness of the film is an ...

(why rainbows appear on soap bubbles and oily puddles) could be described mathematically. During her undergraduate, she worked as a stellar spectroscopist, studying sun-like stars. After graduating with her bachelor's degree in physics, she pursued a doctorate in astrophysics from

, and completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Career

In 1997, William Borucki added Batalha to the science team and she started work on transit photometry. She has been involved with the Kepler Mission since the design and funding, and as one of the original Co-Investigators was responsible for the selection of the more than 150,000 stars monitored by the telescope. She now works closely with team members at Ames Research Center to identify viable planets from the data of the Kepler mission. She led the analysis that yielded the discovery in 2011 of Kepler 10b, the first confirmed rocky planet outside our solar system. In November 2017, the Space Telescope Science Institute selected 13 programs for Director's Discretionary Early Release Science (DD-ERS) on the

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope which conducts infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, its high resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Spa ...

. Of a total of 460 observation hours allocated, Batalha's project, 'The Transiting Exoplanet Community Early Release Science Program', was awarded 52.1 hours; the highest of any DD-ERS program on the JWST. These observation hours are allocated to be used during the first five months of the telescope's operation.

Presentations

Batalha presented 'A Planet for Goldilocks' at

Talks at Google Talks at Google is a global, internal talks series hosted by Google. The talks are most often hosted for Google employees before being publicly released on their YouTube YouTube is a global online video platform, online video sharing and s ...

in 2016. She presented 'From Lava Worlds to Living Worlds' at

Breakthrough Initiatives Breakthrough Initiatives is a science-based program founded in 2015 and funded by Julia and Yuri Milner, also of Breakthrough Prize, to search for extraterrestrial intelligence over a span of at least 10 years. The program is divided into multiple ...

in 2019.

Recognition

In 2017, Batalha and two other exoplanet scientists were named to Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World. In the same year, Batalha won Smithsonian Magazine's American Ingenuity Award in Physical Sciences. She was elected a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

in 2019 and a Legacy Fellow of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

in 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Batalha, Natalie 1966 births Living people American astrophysicists NASA astrophysicists UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni University of California, Santa Cruz alumni San Jose State University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the American Astronomical Society Planetary scientists Women planetary scientists 21st-century American astronomers 20th-century American astronomers Scientists from California 21st-century American women scientists 20th-century American women scientists Women astrophysicists

Biography

Career

Presentations

Recognition

See also

References