Patrick Côté received his Ph.D. in astrophysics from McMaster University in 1994, and is currently a Principal Research Officer at the National Research Council (NRC-Herzberg) in Victoria, BC. His research interests include the structure, evolution and dynamics of nearby clusters and galaxies, as well as the Milky Way and its satellite system. He has published more than 200 papers in the refereed literature, and has been a frequent user of some of the world’s premier telescopes, including the Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer space observatories, as well as many large ground-based telescopes. He was the principal investigator, or a founding member, of some of the largest surveys of galaxies in the local universe undertaken during the past 15 years, including the Hubble ACS Virgo Cluster Survey and the CFHT Next Generation Virgo Cluster Survey.  He is the Principal Investigator of the proposed CASTOR mission, a Canadian-led flagship space telescope that was recently selected in the Long Range Plan for Canadian Astronomy as Canada’s highest priority for space astronomy in the 2020s.