Ray Jayawardhana is the Harold Tanner Dean of the Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences and a Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University, effective September 1, 2018. He was formerly Dean of Science and a Professor of physics & astronomy at York University. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, and an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Michigan. An award-winning science writer, his primary research areas include the formation and early evolution of stars, brown dwarfs and planets. . His current research focuses on characterizing exoplanets using telescopes on the ground and in space.