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.
Management:
The Director's position is currently vacant.
Andrew Ptak (GSFC) has in the past served as interim HEASARC Director, and now continues to manage the software group that develops HEASoft as well as assorted other HEASARC tools.
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 Fornax Initiative 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 CLASS, LiteBIRD, and PRIMA collaborations. He serves as the Principal Investigator of the EXCLAIM balloon mission.
HEASARC and LAMBDA support scientists:
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 the XSPEC package and issues in X-ray spectroscopy, the XSELECT analysis environment, and some other parts of HEASoft.
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.
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.
Nils Odegard (GSFC & ADNET) works on the development and collection of new LAMBDA data products and provides guidance for scientific content.
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.
Steve Sturner (GSFC & UMBC) is the archive scientist for the INTEGRAL mission. He is also responsible for maintaining HEASARC's bibliography and conducting a regular archive verification.
David Turner (GSFC & UMBC) is a HEASARC staff scientist responsible for the examples and tutorials demonstrating high-energy data analysis on the Fornax science platform
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.
Technical staff
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 FV tool.
Pauline Detweiler (ADNET Systems) provides website development support for LAMBDA.
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 XSPEC, CCfits, and CFITSIO software.
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 (eMITS) 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.
Kristen Killingsworth is part of the web development team working on the web site as well as the Xamin data portal.
Deborah Padgett (GSFC) is comparing the HEASARC data interfaces and tools with those at other archives, looking for areas where the HEASARC can improve interoperability and functionality.
Urmila Prasad (ADNET Systems) provides CMB website and database administration support.
Michael Preciado (Business Integra) 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).
Past HEASARC members
Lorella Angelini (GSFC) was the HEASARC Project Scientist and one of the original HEASARC founders. She was responsible for the XIMAGE and XRONOS packages in the HEASoft software suite, and was the archive scientist for the Swift, Suzaku, Hitomi, and NICER missions. She retired in 2025.
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.
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 adhered to cybersecure best practices. Phil retired in 2024.
Eric Switzer (GSFC) was the LAMBDA Science Lead. He was an active member of the Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer (PIPER) team and did graduate and postdoctoral work with ACT and SPT.
Scott Barthelmy (GSFC) was 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.
Tom McGlynn was the HEASARC Chief Archive Scientist and NAVO Project Scientist until his retirement in 2020.
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 continued to serve in an advisory capacity for these activities in his GSFC-emeritus position.
Arnold Rots (SAO) was the Chandra Archive Scientist. He ensured coordination and integration of Chandra data with the HEASARC interfaces, and developed bibliographic database software for multi-mission use.
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.
Dale Graessle (SAO) was Chandra CALDB scientist and was responsible for developing standard tools for the CALDB for file construction, index building, while ensuring backward compatibility.
Jim Lochner(GSFC & USRA), on assignment at NASA Headquarters, led the HEASARC Education and Public Outreach program.
Frank Marshall (GSFC) was the manager of mission operations for the HEASARC, and was also the NuSTAR archive scientist.
Barb Mattson (GSFC & UMCP) was the lead of the HEASARC's Education and Public Outreach program.
Matt Elliot (ADNET Systems) was developing Python wrappers for HEASoft tools.
Carina Kan (ADNET Systems) was responsible for the maintenance and enhancement of the Xamin and Skyview websites.
Bill Joye (SAO) was responsible for the development and support of the SAOImage DS9 astronomical data visualization software.
Doug van Orsow (Business Integra) was working on proposal peer review support, bibliographic references and dataset cross-indexing, and HEASARC website maintenance.
Stephanie Zonak (ADNET Systems) worked on the development and maintenance of the data transfer and archiving software for NuSTAR, NICER, and other HEASARC-supported active missions.
Roger Brissenden (SAO) was the HEASARC Associate Director, with primary responsibility for the interface between the GSFC-based activities of the HEASARC and the Chandra X-ray Center.