Natalie Batalha

Natalie M. Batalha (born May 14, 1966) is a professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. She has spent her career exploring the stars and looking for planets like Earth around other stars.

Before becoming a professor, Batalha worked at NASA Ames Research Center. There, she held many important jobs on the Kepler Mission, a big project to find Earth-size planets around faraway stars. She was the Science Team Lead from 2010 to 2012, Mission Scientist from 2012 to 2016, and Project Scientist from 2016 to 2018.

Before her time at NASA, Batalha was a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at San Jose State University from 2002 to 2012. Her work helps us understand our place in the universe by searching for other worlds like our own.

Biography

Natalie Batalha grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and went to the University of California, Berkeley. She began studying business but switched to physics after learning that things like rainbows on soap bubbles could be explained with math. During her time there, she studied stars and later earned a doctorate in astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz.

She is married to Celso Batalha, a professor of astronomy and physics at Evergreen Valley College. Their daughter Natasha Batalha is also an astronomer. Together, Natalie and Natasha have worked on projects to find and study planets around other stars using the James Webb Space Telescope.

Career

Natalie Batalha began her work in space science in 1997, helping to study how to find planets around stars. She has been a key part of the Kepler Mission since it began, helping choose the stars the telescope watched and finding planets from the data it collected. In 2011, she helped discover Kepler 10b, the first rocky planet found outside our Solar System.

In 2017, she received many hours of observation time on the new James Webb Space Telescope to study planets around stars. After the telescope launched in 2021, her team found clear signs of carbon dioxide in the air of a faraway planet named WASP-39b. In 2023, they also found water vapor in the air of another planet, WASP-18b, and mapped its temperature as it moved behind its star. Batalha also leads studies at UC Santa Cruz about life in the universe and has shared her expertise with lawmakers.

Presentations

Natalie Batalha shared her ideas in talks. In 2016, she spoke about "A Planet for Goldilocks" at Talks at Google. Later, in 2019, she talked about "From Lava Worlds to Living Worlds" at the Breakthrough Initiatives.

Recognition

In 2011, Natalie Batalha received a special award from NASA for her great leadership with the Kepler Science Team.

Later, in 2017, she was chosen as one of the most influential people in the world by Time Magazine and also won an award from Smithsonian Magazine for her work in science. She has received many other honors from universities and groups for her important contributions to astronomy.