Related mission staff lists

The HEASARC and LAMBDA Staff

About half of the staff are scientists who, in addition to their programmatic responsibilities, are expected to spend 25% of their time on active research. This philosophy of recruiting active hands-on scientists to support the community ensures that the services provided are the highest quality. Our scientists propose for and frequently win observing time on the currently active missions and also undertake AISRP and ADP funded research. The current HEASARC and LAMBDA scientists and their responsibilities are as follows.

Andrew Ptak (GSFC) is the HEASARC Director, leading the overall archive activities. In addition, he manages the HEASoft software group.

Lorella Angelini (GSFC) is the HEASARC Project Scientist. She is responsible for the XIMAGE and XRONOS packages in the XANADU software suite, and is the archive scientist for the Swift, Suzaku, Hitomi, and NICER missions.

Tess Jaffe (GSFC) is the HEASARC Chief Archive Scientist, responsible for maintaining the archive and its interfaces. She also serves as Project Scientist for the NASA Astronomical Virtual Observatories (NAVO), a collaboration between the HEASARC, MAST, and IPAC, and as the archive scientist for the RXTE, IXPE, and XRISM missions.

Tom Essinger-Hileman (GSFC) is the LAMBDA Science Lead. He is a member of the Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS), Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER), and EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping (EXCLAIM) collaborations. He serves as the Deputy Principal Investigator of EXCLAIM.

Graeme Addison (JHU) is a LAMBDA archive scientist who serves as the primary liaison to the CMB community.

Keith Arnaud (GSFC & UMCP) is responsible for XANADU software (XSPEC) package and issues in X-ray spectroscopy, the XSELECT analysis environment, and some other parts of HEASoft.

Scott Barthelmy (GSFC) is the PI of GCN/TAN, the Gamma-ray Coordinates Network/Transient Astronomy Network, and the Lead Scientist for its activities within the HEASARC. Scott retired in 2024.

Antara Basu-Zych (GSFC & UMBC) splits her time between the HEASARC and the NASA Astronomical Virtual Observatories (NAVO) project, leading the ingest of database tables into the HEASARC's Browse and Xamin systems, keeping track of the HEASARC usage statistics, acting as the archive scientist for the NuSTAR and XMM-Newton mission, and maintaining inter alia the HEASARC's Meetings and Upcoming Dates and Deadlines web pages.

Mike Corcoran (GSFC & Catholic University of America) is the Fermi archive scientist, manages the HEASARC's Calibration Database (CALDB), publishes the High Energy Astrophysics Picture of the Week, and maintains the Astro-Update web page, and studies X-ray emission from massive stars.

Steve Drake (GSFC & USRA) was responsible for ingest of new databases and generating user statistics and served as archive scientist for RXTE, CGRO and XMM-Newton. Steve retired in 2018. He sadly passed away in 2023.

Tom McGlynn was the HEASARC Chief Archive Scientist and NAVO Project Scientist until his retirement in 2020.

Nathan Miller (GSFC & JHU) is a LAMBDA archive scientist who handles data ingest and bibliography, acts as liaison to the CMB community, and develops simulations for CMB polarization systematics.

Bill Pence (GSFC Emeritus) led the HEASARC's FITS activities, viz., the CFITSIO, HEAsoft, fv software development, as well as the Hera project, until his retirement in 2014. He continues to serve in an advisory capacity for these activities in his GSFC-emeritus position.

Brian Powell (GSFC) is the HEASARC's Data Scientist, responsible for developing AI/ ML analysis techniques, examples, and interfaces for community use in analyzing high-energy astrophysics data in the Big Data era.

Alan Smale (GSFC Emeritus) was the HEASARC Director, leading the overall archive activities, until his retirement in 2023. He continues to serve in an advisory capacity for these activities in his GSFC-emeritus position.

Steve Sturner (GSFC & UMBC) is the archive scientist for the INTEGRAL mission, in which role he oversees the ingest of INTEGRAL data into the archive and maintains the INTEGRAL website.

Janet Weiland (GSFC & JHU) works for LAMBDA on the implementation of new data products and helps guide CMB science content.

Abdu Zoghbi (GSFC & UMCP) is contributing to HEASARC user support in a variety of ways, particularly with Python tools and tutorials. He contributes to the HEASARC infrastructure and Python libraries that provide data access through the Virtual Observatory protocols. Abdu is also working on the design and leading the HEASARC's technical development of a cloud science platform for NASA astrophysics, including the cloud data storage and retrieval infrastructure, the containerized software environment, and user tutorials.

The other members of the HEASARC staff include system analysts, software and website developers, and programmers, many of whom work for other GSFC or SAO projects in addition to their HEASARC responsibilities. These staff, many of whom have advanced degrees in astronomy and physics, support data processing and archiving, database population, analysis software, and web programming, as well as providing user support for the HEASARC's services in some cases.

Jesse Allen (ADNET Systems) works on day-to-day data archive tasks for a variety of high-energy astrophysics missions such as CALET, MAXI, HaloSat, Swift, and NICER. He also works on software support and maintenance for many of the HEASARC's historical missions (Vela 5B, Einstein, EXOSAT, among others) and their associated web pages, the Interplanetary Burst Network database updates, and statistical analysis of misison bibliographies, web access volumes, and software downloads.

Mike Arida (ADNET Systems) performs system administration for the HEASARC.

Pan Chai (ADNET Systems) is working on the development of the Hera software.

Meredith Gibb (ADNET Systems) develops and maintains VO interfaces and database access for Xamin as well as web tools such as parts of the GCN.

Craig Gordon (ADNET Systems) is responsible for the development and support of the XANADU software XSPEC.

Michael Greason (ADNET Systems) manages the web pages and data archive for the CMB portion (LAMBDA, the Legacy Archive for Microwave Background Data Analysis) of the HEASARC website. He also has system administration responsibilities for this site.

T. Britt Griswold (LUSA Associates) provides scientific illustration and graphics support for LAMBDA.

Bryan Irby (ADNET Systems) is the lead software developer responsible for building and distributing the HEAsoft software package to the astronomical community, and providing user support.

Carina Kan (ADNET Systems) is responsible for the design and development of the Xamin and Skyview websites.

Phil Newman (GSFC) managed the storage and hardware acquisition strategies for the HEASARC, prioritized system administration tasks, and interfaced with Center security officials to ensure that the HEASARC adheres to cybersecure best practices. Phil retired in 2024.

Urmila Prasad (ADNET Systems) provides CMB website and database administration support.

Michael Preciado (Syneren Technologies) develops Virtual Observatory (VO) applications and publishes HEASARC resources within the VO.

Kristin Rutkowski (ADNET Systems) develops and supports the HEASARC's XSPEC, CCfits, and CFITSIO software.

Ed Sabol (ADNET Systems) is the HEASARC's database administrator. Working closely with staff scientists, he ingests the tables and catalogs into the HEASARC database and is responsible for the maintainance and development of the Browse service. He also works on many of the HEASARC's web-based tools and applications (notably ARK and RPS), various internal database applications, and back-end infrastructure which supports the HEASARC's web services (such as for Hera).

Doug van Orsow (Syneren Technologies) is working on proposal peer review support, bibliographic references and dataset cross-indexing, and HEASARC website maintenance.