Gregory Laughlin received a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz in 1994. He held an NSF/JSPS Fellowship in Tokyo, and also did postdoctoral research at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley. From 1999-2001, he worked for NASA as a Planetary Scientist at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CA. He joined the UCSC faculty in 2001. In 2004, he was recipient of an NSF CAREER award, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2007. Laughlin's research interests focus on numerical simulations and modeling of data. Current areas of interest include: detection and characterization of extrasolar planets, hydrodynammical simulations and the extremely distant future.