2020 ASD Peer Awards Ceremony

Due to COVID-19, this year's ceremony was held virtually, with nearly 110 people participating, plus a new wrinkle of a talent show by ASD members.

Peer Award Winners

Citations read by Division Director Rob Petre and Deputy Division Director Rita Sambruna.

Ken Simms

Citation: For demonstrating sustained excellence over thirty years at NASA, enabling a broad range of successful spaceflight and balloon borne scientific missions.

Long Citation: Ken is enthusiastic to share his expertise and knowledge in order to improve NASA products wherever possible. Other groups at Goddard would send their interns and new hires to him to learn, and Ken is always willing to help everyone.

Ken has successfully fabricated, modified or repaired hardware from over 120 different projects, including the Resolve instrument on the X-Ray Imaging and Spectrometer Mission and the ComPair balloon project. Ken’s attitude toward work and friendly demeanor are always a great morale boost. Ken is renowned for enabling the NASA mission effectively and reliably.

Wilson Lara

Citation: For your tremendous contribution to upgrades and improvements of the Goddard 100-meter X-ray beamline facility.

Long Citation: Wilson is a very hard working and talented engineer. During the X-ray beamline upgrades, he accomplished many challenging tasks through planning and careful work, and his diligence allowed the work to be completed in time to meet the XRISM project needs.

In addition, Wilson is always seeking out ways to improve the work environment, from sorting screws, to cleaning hardware, improving utility infrastructure, even making a new concrete pad for the storeroom. He is proactive, autonomous, and full of initiative. He is also a fun character, always in a good mood, contributing to a good atmosphere in the lab.  

Sara Mitchell

Citation: For your enthusiastic dedication to ASD’s social media presence, including such major successes as Black Hole Week, examplars of your advance work and attention to detail for scientific correctness, and always looking to expand to new audiences.

Long Citation: Sara’s tenaciousness has allowed the ASD to maintain a strong social media presence, even during lean times. She is now leading those efforts into a new era where the team can fully participate in social media efforts across the Agency.

In particular, her tireless efforts contributed significantly to the success of the team’s Black Hole Week communications push last fall. Sara worked long hours in the weeks leading up to the event to ensure the team’s social media content was written, scientifically vetted, and ready to post. During the week, Sara stayed late each day to ensure that day’s content was completed and that the next day’s content was ready to go.  

Takayuki Hayashi

Citation: For your significant contribution to the XRISM X-ray Mirror Assembly (XMA) development, and your work to improve the techniques of X-ray beam line testing.

Long Citation: Takayuki is a man of few words, but knows what needs to be done to produce results. He has worked efficiently and meritoriously in the qualification of mirror elements for spaceflight, and wholly designed, constructed and commissioned the Attenuator/Crystal/Filter Chamber for the X-ray Source of the Pencil Beam Raster Scanning upgrade.

Takayuki work on testing the components of the XRISM XMA, including hundreds of mirror segments, and sub-assembly modules, was like a data-taking machine. Takayuki’s new digital technique to examine mirror segments has assured the performance of the XMA.

Renita Shields

Citation: For exceptional leadership, guidance, and dedication to the Astrophysics Science Division’s Resource Analyst group, and for continually working to lift office morale.

Long Citation: Although still relatively new to the BMO position, Renita has made a measurable impact over the past year in our Division as well as the resources community. She provides excellent customer service to the Division and the Resources community.

Renita is the “go-to” BMO with a positive can-do attitude that lifts the morale of the office. She is often called upon for her expertise and consistently offers viable solutions to challenges when they arise. Her attention to detail ensures that our Division finances are in excellent shape and that the RAs are prepared with the skills necessary to handle any task given by the PIs or Lab Chiefs.

Not only is she helpful in terms of helping the team with all manner of queries and processes, whenever she notices that others need extra support, she jumps in and offers training. She is highly professional, but never forgets the importance of fun.  

Bryan Irby

Citation: For your critical leadership of the HEASOFT/FTOOLS package, managing software library contributions, implementing new technologies, and gracefully answering questions from scientists around the world.

Long Citation: Bryan is an integral part of the HEASARC team. He works tirelessly to ensure that the official distributed software functions well.

Bryan manages contributions from multiple team members, handles high-level library additions and maintenance, and performs extensive tests to ensure the code works as a whole before distribution.

Byan researches new technologies and helps make the HEASARC code more robust and user-friendly for users and developers alike.

Bryan is extremely responsive to questions, both from internal team members and the general public. His knowledge base and experience within the HEASARC make him an important coworker.

Bryan is vital to the continued success of the many missions of ASD, as well as the missions of all the scientists and students around the world who use our software.

Olivia Lupie

Citation: For your outstanding guidance and integration of a diverse team of engineers, managers, and scientists to maximize the lifetime and scientific achievements of the instrument payload aboard the Hubble Space Telescope.

Long Citation: Dr. Olivia Lupie has exhibited exemplary and inclusive leadership for the Hubble Space Telescope operations team, even during periods of unprecedented stress such as government shutdowns and pandemic-induced compulsory telework. She has competently guided an extended team of engineers, managers, and scientists – a group with diverse and sometimes strongly divergent opinions – in the maximization of the useful scientific lifetime of the observatory and instrument payload.

Olivia’s leadership, for example, in the effort to adopt new technical methods of operation – including the development of a hybrid target acquisition process – will enable the observatory to respond to the increasingly anomalous behavior of critical gyroscopic components. Olivia has also demonstrated an openness to novel approaches, sometimes offered by less-established members of the Hubble team, to existing observatory challenges. She welcomes and seeks input from scientists and engineers alike, and she creates and encourages an open, inclusive, and affirmative work environment for the extended Hubble science and mission operations community.  

Nicholas Wakeham

Citation: For your significant contributions and valuable insights as part of the Athena X-ray Integral Field Unit microcalorimeter team.

Long Citation: Nick is a top-rate scientist who has made significant contributions to the development of transition-edge-sensor (TES) microcalorimeters. He also has a strong theoretical background, strong experimental techniques, and meticulous attention to detail.

I addition, Nick often steps in to help with things that are not his responsibility, drafting the group’s annual report for the Athena project, and supporting reviews during the government shutdown when civil servants were not able to participate.

Nick is always a pleasure to work with and goes out of his way to help others.

Knicole Colon

Citation: For your leadership in developing and organizing the Chesapeake Bay Area Exoplanet Meetings (Chexo).

Long Citation: The Chesapeake Bay Area Exoplanet Meeting (Chexo) has grown to be the region’s largest regular gathering of exoplanet astronomers, thanks to the tireless efforts of Knicole, who almost singlehandedly manages the organization of every meeting.

Knicole liaises with the host venue, sets up submission and review of abstracts, even runs the website and mailing list. Chexo brings high visibility to Goddard as a regional and national leader in exoplanet science, and has become a significant recruiting resource, providing a concrete example of regular scientific interactions between Goddard and local universities.

The June 2020 meeting was moved smoothly to a virtual meeting due to the Covid-19 pandemic, allowing seamless continuation of the collaboration. Without exception, every meeting has been a resounding success because of Knicole’s efforts.

Tom McGlynn

Citation: For your multi-decade leadership in making HEASARC a central player in the virtual observatory community and for your development work on W3Browse and Xamin, both of which aid astrophysicists everywhere in accessing HEASARC data.

Long Citation: Tom has led a decades-long effort to connect and integrate the HEASARC with the international community defining and implementing Virtual Observatory (VO) standards, a somewhat thankless and often tedious task that is now bearing fruit.

Tom’s dedication and thirst for innovation (for the VO, for W3Browse, and Xamin) has kept NASA and the HEASARC at the forefront of developments in astronomical web services. Furthermore, he is quick to respond to problems; helpful, conscientious, and amenable in his interactions with others; and supportive of his colleagues.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that a significant fraction of the high energy astrophysics community uses HEASARC resources every day, which means that all these scientists have directly benefited from Tom’s hard work -- a pretty staggering contribution to science, we think.  

Elisa Quintana

Citation: For spearheading the development of the exoplanet research group.

Long Citation: In the three years that Elisa has worked at Goddard, she has spearheaded the development of an exoplanet research group within the Astrophysics Science Division.

This group started with around 10 civil servant and contractor scientists in Code 667, the Exoplanet and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory, but due to Elisa’s efforts, the group has expanded significantly, to more than 40 people. The group is now made up of colleagues at all career stages from ASD as well as GSFC colleagues from planetary sciences and heliophysics, and the group extends beyond Goddard, with active collaborators from around the US, Canada, Italy, and Australia participating regularly in group’s activities.

Students at all stages, from high school through postdoc, make up a significant fraction of the group, and Elisa mentors several of these students herself. In addition to weekly meetings of the full group, there are now splinter groups that meet regularly on different focused topics. The group’s work has resulted in a number of publications based on data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission. Elisa’s motivation to grow the research group and to help our students shine, has put ASD and Goddard on the map as an exoplanet powerhouse.

 

Don Lindler

Citation: For your invaluable contributions of software and support throughout your outstanding, highly productive career.

Long Citation: Don Lindler is being recognized for his outstanding data analysis and programming support, which have contributed enormously to the Astrophysics Science Division over a career of more than forty years.

Don has been a mainstay for software programming and project support since the pre-launch days of the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE). His skills in handling large data sets, evaluating test data, and building data reduction tools in the Instrument Design Lab (IDL) have been core to many projects since the late 1970s.

Don’s “Quicklook” data analysis tools have been adapted for use on multiple Hubble Space Telescope instruments as well as other projects, and his enormous contributions to programming and implementing the Test Planning Tool were invaluable to the successful test program for the James Webb Space Telescope.