NOTICE: This Legacy journal article was published in Volume 4, February 1994, and has not been updated since publication. Please use the search facility above to find regularly-updated information about this topic elsewhere on the HEASARC site.

The HEASARC Staff 1994

This list updates the one published in the past issues of Legacy. It includes new members of the science, science support teams, and members of the programming staff.

Scientists

Mike Corcoran received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, where as a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics he learned the (often frustrating) art of visible-band photometry and polarimetry. Corcoran's thesis was an attempt to explore the importance of non-sphericity of winds from hot, massive stars by looking for a residual polarimetric signal in the photospheric radiation scattered by the wind material. As a result of this work, Corcoran became convinced of 3 things: that the assumption of spherical symmetry applied to winds from hot stars is, in general, unphysical; that disturbances in stellar winds can have observable effects throughout the electromagnetic spectrum; and that an unheated telescope dome gets pretty cold in winter. Moving indoors, in 1988 Corcoran found a job at the Goddard Space Flight Center as a post-doc with Advanced Computer Concepts (ACC) studying stellar wind behavior via analysis of UV spectral lines. After finishing his tenure at ACC in 1989, Corcoran inverse-compton-scattered his way to an NRC post-doc at the X-ray group at Goddard. In 1991 Corcoran joined the ROSAT Guest Observer Facility at Goddard as lead archive scientist, and in 1993 Corcoran joined the HEASARC to continue the task of ensuring the community's safe, convenient and timely access to ROSAT data.

Support Staff

Mary Odell received her BA in French from Montana State University in 1987. After graduating, Mary worked in France as an English teacher. She returned to the States to pursue graduate studies in Science Journalism and Mass Communication. In December, 1993 she received her MA from the University of Maryland. While completing her MA, Mary wrote and edited public affairs and educational material for NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) Project. She was also production coordinator for the EOS videos. She joined the HEASARC as a technical writer in August of 1993. Her responsibilities include writing, editing and coordinating documentation for the HEASARC's World Wide Web server, and editing the ROSAT Newsletter.

Programming Staff

Richard Burton received a BS in astrophysics from Indiana University in 1989 and an MS in astrophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1992. His thesis was on the effects of binarity and chromospheric activity on far-ultraviolet emission in late-type stars. After taking on many odd jobs in search of better employment in a depressed economy, Mr. Burton joined HEASARC in January 1994 and is responsible for the development and enhancement of analysis software and for the support and maintenance of the XANADU software package.

Eric Lufkin earned a B.S. in Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota in 1985, and a PhD in Astronomy at the University of Virginia in 1991. From there he went to the University of Alabama to spend two years as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Most of his previous work has been theoretical in nature, concentrating on supercomputer simulations of gas dynamics in clusters of galaxies, with a special interest in gamma ray bursts. Since joining the HEASARC, he has been working on providing FITS interfaces for XANADU timing analysis software.

Alan Richmond is a Principal Systems Engineer with the HEASARC. His task is to provide access methods to the resources of HEASARC. This is being built on the World-Wide Web. He has formerly built software - especially user interfaces - for several international scientific research projects. This software allows materials physicists to fry frogs legs with synchrotron radiation in France, lets billions of astronomers throughout the galaxy input proposals for usage of the Hubble Space Telescope (and access the observation catalogs), enables European plasma physicists to bring closer the day when we can get unlimited energy from seawater,and monitors nuclear power stations in Belgium. He has published over 10 papers in a number of obscure journals.

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