Speakers 2012

Dimitar Sasselov (Sofia, 1961) is a Bulgarian astronomer based in the United States. He is a Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University and director of the Harvard Origins of Life Initiative, a new interdisciplinary institute that joins biologists, chemists and astronomers in searching for the starting points of life on Earth. In 2002, Sasselov led a team that discovered the most distant planet in the Milky Way known at the time. In his search for planets, he employs novel methods that can potentially detect planets similar to Earth, and he co-operates with NASA's Kepler Mission. Dimitar Sasselov watches for exoplanets by looking for transits, the act of a planet passing across the face of its star, dimming its light and changing its chemical signature. This simple, elegant way of searching has led to a bounty of newly discovered planets.