Our speaker tonight, Dr. Douglas Hudgins moved to NASA Headquarters in 2005 where he took up a Program Scientist position in the Astrophysics Division(ApD).  He currently serves as the Program Scientist for NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program (ExEP) and TESS mission, Deputy Program Scientist for the Kepler mission, and Program Officer for the Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (ADAP), ApD’s flagship research and analysis (R&A) grants program.  As ExEP Program Scientist, he is the chief architect responsible for charting the scientific course of NASA’s effort to search out and study planets that orbit stars other than our own sun.  His duties in this capacity include overseeing the development of advanced technologies that will one day enable space missions to achieve the Program’s ultimate goal—finding and characterizing potentially habitable, Earth-sized planets around nearby stars, and searching for signs of life on those worlds.