George Ricker, Jr

Dr. George Ricker is the principal investigator for NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Sky Survey (TESS) Explorer mission, which was launched in April 2018. TESS continues to operate successfully in its second extended mission. Dr. Ricker serves as the Director of the Detector Laboratory and as Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. He is also the UROP program coordinator for MKI, and serves as MIT’s representative on the board of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). Dr. Ricker received his undergraduate degree from MIT in physics, an M.S. in astronomy from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. During his career, Dr. Ricker has published more than 400 papers in astronomy, high energy astrophysics, and experimental physics.