Natalie M. Batalha

Batalha was in a leadership role for the NASA Kepler Mission since 1997, from the early design phase through to the end of the mission. She was part of the team at NASA Ames Research Center responsible for the selection of the more than 150,000 stars monitored by the Kepler telescope and she served as the lead scientist for the team that identified planets using photometric data. She led the discovery of Kepler 10b, the first confirmed rocky planet outside our solar system, which enabled the first tests of models of the composition and structure of rocky exoplanets. She led the paper describing 5000 exoplanet candidates and, in a separate effort, led the characterization of the mission sensitivity, which together enabled the derivation of the rates of occurrence of exoplanets as a function of size and temperature. She co-leads NExESS, the NASA Nexus for Exoplanet Systems Science. Batalha is known for her strong leadership in the astronomical community, characterized by her high standards, and emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusiveness.