Dr. Joshua N. Winn is the Professor of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. After earning his Ph.D. in Physics from MIT, he held fellowships from the National Science Foundation and NASA at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Dr. Winn's research goals are to explore the properties of planets around other stars, understand how planets form and evolve, and make progress on the age-old question of whether there are other planets capable of supporting life. He was a member of the science team of NASA's Kepler mission and is the Deputy Science Director of a future NASA mission called the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. He has authored or coauthored more than 100 scientific articles on the subject of exoplanetary science. At MIT, Dr. Winn teaches physics and astronomy and has won several awards for his dedication to his students, including the Buechner Faculty Teaching Prize in 2008 and the School of Science Prize for Excellence in Graduate Teaching in 2013. His talent for communicating science to the general public was honed during graduate school, when he wrote for the science section of The Economist.