Dimitar D. Sasselov
 Professor of Astronomy
 Director, Harvard Origins of Life Initiative
 
 Dimitar Sasselov has been a professor at Harvard since 1998.
 He arrived to CfA in 1990 as a Harvard-Smithsonian Center 
 post-doctoral fellow. Between 1999 and 2003 he was the Head 
 Tutor of the Astronomy Department.
 Dimitar was born in Bulgaria, and was educated at Sofia University,
 where he received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1988, almost concurrently
 working on his degree at the University of Toronto, Canada, where
 he received his Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1990.
 
 His research explores the many modes of interaction between
 radiation and matter: from the evolution of hydrogen and helium
 in the early universe to the study of the structure of stars.
 He is very fond of unstable stars - ones that pulsate regularly
 and allow us to determine distances to other galaxies. Most
 recently his research has led him to explore the nature of
 planets orbiting other stars. He has discovered a few such
 planets - with novel techniques that he hopes to use to find
 planets like Earth.

 He is the director of the new Harvard Origins of Life Initiative -
 a multidisciplinary center bridging scientists in the physical
 and in the life sciences, intent to study the transition from
 chemistry to life and its place in the context of the Universe.