Dr. Thomas González Roberts

Dr. Roberts’ research portfolio spans three core themes: international coordination, sustainability, and security in space. With his students in the Engineering Space Policy Laboratory, he develops quantitative methods to assess how operators comply with coordination rules, evaluates the design of sustainability guidelines to mitigate debris growth in congested orbital regimes, and investigates how the actions of military and commercial satellite operators shape broader space security dynamics. Drawing from observational data, machine learning, and astrodynamic modeling, his research informs operator-, state-, and international-level decision-making and contributes to data-driven rule-making for the rapidly expanding global space sector.

Dr. 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. His 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.