Present PositionSwift Science Center Lead and Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer Guest Observer Facility ManagerBrief BioPadi joined NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in 1993 as a USRA visiting scientist with the High Speed Photometer and Polarimeter Team aboard the Hubble Space Telescope, studying the optical and ultraviolet polarization seen in X-ray binaries, pulsars and active galaxies. In 1995 she joined the Monitoring X-ray Experiment (MOXE) team, an X-ray all-sky monitor that was in development and testing as part of the Russian-led Spectrum X-Gamma mission. In 1997 she joined the Rossi X-ray Timing Experiment (RXTE) Guest Observer Facility (GOF), splitting her time between science support and her own research on the long-term X-ray variability of X-ray binaries. Since 2003, she has been managing the RXTE GOF as well as the Swift Science Center. She is currently on detail at NASA Headquarters in Washington as the program scientist for the Kepler mission, the US point of contact for the MOST US Guest Observer program and as a discipline scientist for X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy.Educational BackgroundB. S. in astronomy and astrophysics, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, 1987M. S. in physics and atmospheric science, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, 1989 Ph. D. in physics and atmospheric science, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, 1993, thesis title: "Chaotic Scattering in the Gravitational Three-body Problem" Research InterestsInvestigation of accretion disk dynamics in X-ray binaries through analysis of their long-term variability in the X-rays.Current ProjectsSelected PublicationsPublications at the ADS website.
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