Thomas González Roberts

Thomas González Roberts is an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is the Director of Georgia Tech’s Engineering Space Policy Laboratory. Using tools from observational astronomy and computational astrodynamics, Dr. Roberts studies the behavior of Earth-orbiting satellites to understand how space actors—from superpowers to start-ups—engage with outer space governance. His research interests include international coordination, sustainability, and security in space. Dr. Roberts’ work has been supported by the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation, and earned recognition with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Prize for Open Data, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy’s Prize for Innovation in Global Security, and a placement on Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 in Science list. He holds a PhD and SM in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, an SM in technology and policy from MIT, and a BA in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University.