Guest of Honor – Dr. Tom Barclay

Dr. Thomas Barclay is an Astrophysicist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center where he is the Operations Project Scientist for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. He was formerly Director of the Kepler/K2 mission Guest Observer Office at NASA Ames Research Center where his work with the astronomical community led to thousands of astrophysical and planetary science discoveries including new planets, galaxies and supernovae.  Dr. Barclay analyzes data from both ground and space-based exoplanet surveys to search for small, rocky planets and he specializes in devising new methods to confirm their planetary nature. Dr. Barclay grew up in Sheffield in Northern England and received his Ph.D. from the University College London in 2011 where he worked on ultra-compact white dwarf binary stars. He has participated in the discovery of over 800 exoplanets and is known for his discovery of Kepler-37b, a planet about the size of the Moon that is the smallest planet known outside of our Solar System.