Natasha Batalha’s Research and Accomplishments are Out of This World

Natasha Batalha, a third-year Ph.D. candidate in the dual degree Astronomy and Astrobiology program in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, is studying all things “astro.” Batalha’s research with James Kasting, Evan Pugh University Professor at Penn State, which is fully funded through an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship awarded to her during her second year, focuses on exoplanet studies with an emphasis on early Martian climate.

“The idea is that there are these stark water features on the surface of Mars from a few billion years ago, but we have no idea how that is possible,” said Batalha. “Mars today is a cold, dry place with a thin and tenuous atmosphere. If Mars, early on, had a thick atmosphere, though, then it’s possible that greenhouses gases could have helped to keep it warm over a prolonged period of time. We are taking atmospheric models and trying to test this hypothesis of: was Mars really a habitable, wet place early on in its history?” Batalha’s work on early Martian climate was recently published in Icarus.

Batalha was inspired to pursue science at a young age by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and jokes that her dissertation is just an extension of her middle school science fair project. In addition to her work at Penn State, she has worked with the Space Telescope Science Institute to characterize planets outside of our solar system, called exoplanets, with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Batalha said that she hopes to use the information that they learn about the chemistry and climate of planets in our solar system, like Mars, and then apply this knowledge in the future when we have more data on these exoplanets.

Although she came from a well-educated family in Brazil and had a great education herself, Batalha recognized that the quality of STEM education is not the same for everyone and that even students at good schools can fall through the cracks. She has taken her passion to help others receive a good education to the next level as the founder and president of Learn to Be @ Penn State, a nationwide, nonprofit organization with the mission of providing free online tutoring to K-12 students in underserved communities. In just two years, the organization at Penn State has provided over 33,000 minutes of tutoring and is the second-ranked chapter in the nation. Batalha has also served as the Girl Scout co-chair of the Graduate Women in Science (GWIS) organization at Penn State and has organized STEM workshops for local middle school girls.

Batalha received her bachelor’s degree in Physics from Cornell University, where she also continued her lifelong hobby of dancing. In addition to her NSF fellowship, she was also awarded the STEM Scholar Graduate Fellowship during her first year at Penn State.