Background
Natalie Batalha was born on May 14, 1966, in Northern California.
When Natalie Batalha was growing up in Northern California, she told her mother she wanted to be a philosopher - “looking for meaning in life.”
2011
Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94035, USA
Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy Sciene team lead at NASA Ames Research Center speaks during a news conference about the newly discovered planet Kepler-22b during a news conference at the NASA Ames Research Center on December 5, 2011 in Moffett Field, California. Scientsts with NASA's Kepler mission announced that they discoverd a planet in the "habitable zone" where water could exist on the planet's surface. The newly confirmed planet is being called Kepler-22b and is approximately 2.4 times the radius of earth and orbits a star similar to the earth's sun. (Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
2011
Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94035, USA
(L to R) Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy Sciene team lead at NASA Ames Research Center, speaks as Bill Borucki, Kepler Principal Investigator at NASA Ames Research Center and Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research listen during a news conference about the newly discovered planet Kepler-22b during a news conference at the NASA Ames Research Center on December 5, 2011 in Moffett Field, California. Scientsts with NASA's Kepler mission announced that they discoverd a planet in the "habitable zone" where water could exist on the planet's surface. The newly confirmed planet is being called Kepler-22b and is approximately 2.4 times the radius of earth and orbits a star similar to the earth's sun. (Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
2017
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023, USA
(L-R) Astronomer Natalie Batalha, Professor Guillem Anglada and Astronomer Michael Gillon attend the 2017 Time 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017 in New York City. (April 24, 2017 - Source: Jemal Countess/Getty Images North America)
2017
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023, USA
Michael Gillon, Wendy Cino, Guillem Anglada Escude, Natalie Batalha and Celso Batalha attend the 2017 TIME 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
2017
8th St NW & F St NW, Washington, DC 20001, United States
Physical Sciences honoree Natalie Batalha attends the Smithsonian Magazine's 2017 American Ingenuity Awards at the National Portrait Gallery on November 29, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images)
2011
Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94035, USA
Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy Sciene team lead at NASA Ames Research Center speaks during a news conference about the newly discovered planet Kepler-22b during a news conference at the NASA Ames Research Center on December 5, 2011 in Moffett Field, California. Scientsts with NASA's Kepler mission announced that they discoverd a planet in the "habitable zone" where water could exist on the planet's surface. The newly confirmed planet is being called Kepler-22b and is approximately 2.4 times the radius of earth and orbits a star similar to the earth's sun. (Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
2011
Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94035, USA
(L to R) Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy Sciene team lead at NASA Ames Research Center, speaks as Bill Borucki, Kepler Principal Investigator at NASA Ames Research Center and Jill Tarter, director of the Center for SETI Research listen during a news conference about the newly discovered planet Kepler-22b during a news conference at the NASA Ames Research Center on December 5, 2011 in Moffett Field, California. Scientsts with NASA's Kepler mission announced that they discoverd a planet in the "habitable zone" where water could exist on the planet's surface. The newly confirmed planet is being called Kepler-22b and is approximately 2.4 times the radius of earth and orbits a star similar to the earth's sun. (Source: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images North America)
2016
Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94035, USA
Dr. Natalie Batalha, pictured here, is an astrophysicist and the project scientist for NASA's Kepler space telescope. Credit: NASA Ames/Dominic Hart
2017
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023, USA
(L-R) Astronomer Natalie Batalha, Professor Guillem Anglada and Astronomer Michael Gillon attend the 2017 Time 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017 in New York City. (April 24, 2017 - Source: Jemal Countess/Getty Images North America)
2017
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023, USA
Celso Batalha (L) and astronomer Natalie Batalha attend the 2017 Time 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017 in New York City. (April 24, 2017 - Source: Jemal Countess/Getty Images North America)
2017
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023, USA
Astronomer Natalie Batalha (L) attends the 2017 Time 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017 in New York City. (April 24, 2017 - Source: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images North America)
2017
10 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023, USA
Michael Gillon, Wendy Cino, Guillem Anglada Escude, Natalie Batalha and Celso Batalha attend the 2017 TIME 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
2017
8th St NW & F St NW, Washington, DC 20001, United States
Physical Sciences honoree Natalie Batalha attends the Smithsonian Magazine's 2017 American Ingenuity Awards at the National Portrait Gallery on November 29, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images)
2017
419 Great King St, North Dunedin, Dunedin 9016, New Zealand
Nasa Kepler mission scientist Dr Natalie Batalha speaks to a large audience about exoplanets at Otago Museum in Dunedin. Photo: Linda Robertson
2017
Moffett Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94035, USA
By Timothy Ferris, Photograph by Timothy Archibald
Natalie Batalha
Natalie Batalha
Berkeley, CA, USA
Natalie Batalha earned her BS in physics and astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989.
1156 High St, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA
Natalie Batalha earned her PhD in astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz in 1997.
Astronomer astrophysicist physicist scientist
Natalie Batalha was born on May 14, 1966, in Northern California.
When Natalie Batalha was growing up in Northern California, she told her mother she wanted to be a philosopher - “looking for meaning in life.”
Natalie Batalha earned her BS in physics and astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1989 and her PhD in astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz in 1997. Then she completed a post-doctoral fellowship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Batalha started her career as a stellar spectroscopist studying young, sun-like stars. After a post-doctoral fellowship in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she returned to California.
In 1999, inspired by the growing number of exoplanet discoveries, Batalha joined the team led by William Borucki at Ames working on transit photometry - an emerging technology for finding exoplanets. She has been involved with the Kepler Mission since the proposal stage and has contributed to many different aspects of the science, from studying the stars themselves to detecting and understanding the planets they harbor. Batalha led the analysis that yielded the discovery in 2011 of Kepler-10b - the mission's first confirmation of a rocky planet outside our solar system. Today, she leads the effort to understand planet populations in the galaxy based on Kepler discoveries.
Batalha served ten years as professor of physics and astronomy in the classrooms of San Jose State University before joining the Astrophysics Branch of the Space Sciences Division of NASA Ames Research Center.
In 2013, she participated on the taskforce to define NASA's 30-year Astrophysics Roadmap-Enduring Quests, Daring Visions: NASA Astrophysics in the Next Three Decades. In 2015, she joined the leadership team of a new NASA initiative dedicated to the search for evidence of life beyond the Solar System. NASA's Nexus for Exoplanet System Science Coalition, (NExSS) brings teams from multiple disciplines together to understand the diversity of worlds. Kepler has demonstrated that earth-size planets abound in the galaxy. NExSS will lead NASA's efforts to understand which are most likely to harbor life. Batalha also serves on the James Webb Space Telescope Advisory Committee and as a member of the NASA Advisory Council's Astrophysics Subcommittee.
Batalha came to science in a roundabout way. Her teenage pronouncement that she would become a philosopher arrived after she became disillusioned with the Catholic religion she’d studied and read the 1970 novella, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. The book seeded the idea in her that the way to enlightenment was through the pursuit of knowledge.
She thinks that American senate should vote on whether Kepler planets are real.
For young women in particular who are interested in pursuing STEM fields, her advice is similar to what she told her daughter Natasha (currently a graduate student in astrophysics): “If you love this work, persist. Many STEM fields still suffer from gender imbalance, and it may cause you to sometimes doubt yourself. But it’s important to pause and remember that you are capable and have something to offer.”
Quotations:
"Just when you think you've got it all figured out, nature gives you a huge surprise — in this case, literally," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist who works out of California. "Isn't science marvelous?"
"Floating on that "world completely covered in water" could be like being on an Earth ocean and "it's not beyond the realm of possibility that life could exist in such an ocean," Batalha said in a phone interview."
“From Kepler,” she says, “we’ve learned that, on average, every sun-like star has at least one planet, and that there are over ten billion potentially habitable, Earth-size planets in our galaxy alone – further opening up a pathway for the search for life beyond the Solar System.“
“The goal now is to transition from finding habitable zone planets to finding habitable environments, and even living worlds.”
Physical Characteristics:
Hair color - brown
Eyes color - brown
Batalha and her husband, Celso Batalha, are both astrophysicists. They raised their four children to appreciate what she calls “the most important part of science, a sense of wonder and of the beauty of nature.” It worked well enough that their oldest daughter, Natasha, earned her doctorate in astrophysics and astrobiology.