Dr. Patricia (Padi) Boyd

Employer: University of Maryland Baltimore County

Job Description: Astrophysicist/Manager, Swift Science Center

Phone: (301) 286-2550

e-mail: padi@milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov

Padi Boyd received her BS in Astronomy and Astrophysics in 1987 from the Villanova University in Villanova, PA followed by an MSc (1989) and PhD (1993) in Physics and Atmospheric Science from Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA. After receiving her degree, she worked for two years as a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Hubble Space Telescope High Speed Photometer team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center under contract with Universities Space Research Association (USRA) Padi joined the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics at GSFC in 1995 also under contract with USRA as a Research Scientist with the MOnitoring X-ray Experiment (MOXE) X-ray All Sky Monitor which was being prepare for launch on the Russian Spectrum X-Gamma satellite.. In 1997 she joined the Rossi-X-ray Timing Explorer Guest Observer Facility as a Duty Scientist; in 2001 she joined the at GSFC, under a contract agrement with the University of Maryland Baltimore County's Joint Center for Astrophysics. She is currently the lead scientist for the RXTE GOF and the Swift Science Center.

Padi's primary responsibility at GSFC is is science support for the RXTE and Swift missions. This includes supporting the user community from the proposal process to the analysis of RXTE and Swift data. Her scientific interests are time variability of compact objects, polarization of X-ray binaries, and three-body stellar dynamics.

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