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This Legacy journal article was published in Volume 5, November 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.

Support Staff

Steve Fantasia received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Alabama in 1987 and a MS in Astronomy from the University of Maryland in 1993. In between, he worked as an aerospace/systems engineer at Rockwell International for 2 years and the Computer Sciences Corporation for 2 years. At Rockwell he worked on software to simulate the performance of hypersonic vehicles with the emphasis being on optimizing the ascent performance. His primary role at CSC was to develop attitude ground support software for GSFC's ISTP mission. Steve joined the HEASARC in September 1994. He helped quality check WGACAT, a point source catalog generated from all the ROSAT PSPC pointing observations from February 1991 to March 1994. He is assisting with the investigation of the nature of the many variable sources that were found through the creation of WGACAT. He will also be providing analysis and software support for the ROSAT Guest Observer Facility.

Programming Staff

Jesse Allen received a B.S. (Honors) in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Iowa in 1990 and a M.Ed. from the University of Maryland in 1993. His astronomy work has largely focused on radio emission from stellar objects, ranging from black holes to OH masers. An interest in teaching resulted in a baptism by fire in the local public school system: he escaped the hordes of thirteen-year-olds by joining the HEASARC staff in March 1994. He is responsible for converting historical high energy astrophysics observatory data into FITS formats, such as the HEAO-1 A2 maps described earlier in this issue of Legacy. He also writes science fiction in his copious spare time. Some might say the HEAO-1 A2 article is his first fictional work which has failed to be rejected.

Robert Crosier earned a B.S. in Astrophysics from MIT and an M.S. in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Pennsylvania His thesis at MIT was a study of the eclipse transitions of an X-ray pulsar, and his thesis at U. Penn was on a software approach for robotic mental imagery. He was also a research engineer at Lockheed's Space Systems Division, a software consultant in the Boston area, mainly at the MIT Lincoln Lab, and most recently, a UNIX Systems Administrator/Programmer for Goddard Institute for Space Studies on the Columbia University campus. At the HEASARC he will be working with the World Wide Web to help improve the Internet interface between the resources here and the people out there.

Dave Dawson was born in Zaria, Nigeria, but grew up in Southwest Washington, D.C. He attended Cornell University where he earned a B.A. in physics in 1993. He spent the following year working odd jobs, as well as doing a bit of traveling a backpacking. In August, 1994 he joined the HEASARC where he is responsible for recovering the data from the Cosmic X-Ray Spectroscopy Experiment which flew on OSO-8, and putting it online.


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