Dr. Steffen is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His work is primarily on the properties, formation, and dynamical evolution of planets and planetary systems. He was a long-time member of the science team for NASA’s Kepler mission where he contributed to the discovery and characterization of thousands of planets and planetary systems. Dr. Steffen is the author of the book “Hidden in the Heavens”, available from Princeton University Press (Fall 2024). Prior to joining UNLV, he was research faculty at Northwestern University and the Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago Illinois.
Dr. Steffen received his PhD and MS in Physics at the University of Washington, Seattle, and his Bachelors degree in Mathematics and Physics from Weber State University, in Utah.