Paul Sánchez is a Planetary Scientist and Senior Research Associate at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Physics at the National Polytechnic School in Ecuador, his PhD in Physics at the University of Nottingham in England, and did his postdoctoral training at the Université de Rennes 1 in France. His research work involves topics in Computational Quantum Chemistry, Granular Dynamics, Planetary Sciences and Space Exploration. He is part of the NASA OSIRIS-REx and DART missions. Binary asteroid 20882 (VH57) has been renamed 20882 Paulsánchez due to his contributions to the field.