Home Our Researchers Our Researchers Research Area Astronomy Geodesy Geospace Space Technology Full Staff Directory Director’s office Anthea Jane Coster Assistant Director; Principal Research Scientist Physics of the ionosphere, magnetosphere, and thermosphere. Space weather. Global Navigation Satellite System positioning and measurement accuracy. Radio wave propagation. Heidi M. Demers Assistant Director for Administration I serve as the go-to person for all aspects of Human Resources issues including recruitment, onboarding, performance management, employee and labor relations, and training and development. Philip J. Erickson Associate Director; Principal Research Scientist, Geospace Group Lead Remote sensing and scientific study of the near-Earth space environment, focusing on the ionosphere, plasmasphere, and magnetosphere. Michael Hecht Associate Director My current focus is on the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, and on MOXIE, as principal investigator. Colin J. Lonsdale Director My goals as Director are to ensure the long-term research excellence, financial stability, and staff well-being of the Observatory, while remaining active in research. Research staff Ercha Aa Research Scientist Ionosphere-Thermosphere physics and space weather, focusing on ionospheric data assimilation, subauroral electrodynamics, equatorial plasma irregularities, and geospace storm effects. Kazunori Akiyama Research Scientist I am an astrophysicist working on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) project. I primarily study black holes with and develop imaging algorithms for the EHT. Christine M. Alcalde Associate Engineer I work with a multidisciplinary team of research scientists and engineers in the development and design of technology engaged in radio astronomy, geodesy, atmospheric science and space technology. John Barrett Radio Science Software Developer I write software related to the production, processing, and analysis of VLBI and radio astronomy data. I am primarily involved in geodesy (VGOS), the EHT, and EDGES. Geoffrey Crew Research Scientist Supporting the Event Horizon Telescope (observation & correlation), the ALMA Observatory (ALMA Phasing Project), and the AERO-VISTA CubeSat missions (science and software). Christopher Eckert Engineer As a hardware engineer, I develop front-end radio receivers for geodetic and radar systems used in principal research and space situational awareness programs. Pedro Elosegui Research Scientist, Geodesy Group Lead How does Earth work? Geodesy is the answer. Vincent Fish Research Scientist Astronomer working on the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Larisa Goncharenko Research Scientist Physics of ionosphere and thermosphere, with emphasis on ionosphere-thermosphere-mesosphere-stratosphere coupling Dan Hoak Radio Science Software Developer I write software that's used to process data from radio astronomy and geodesy experiments. Jens Kauffmann Research Scientist, Astronomy Group Lead Focused on developing astronomy at Haystack. Personal interests include star formation in the Milky Way and nearby galaxies, and training the next generation of scientists. Mary Knapp Research Scientist Radio detection of exoplanets, development of space-based radio telescopes, CubeSat mission design/instrumentation. Deputy PI/PM for AERO-VISTA, PS for ASTERIA. Nancy Wolfe Kotary Communications Officer I explain Haystack research and technology to all audiences across all channels, including our website, social media, publications, reports, visits and tours, and education and public outreach. Frank David Lind Research Engineer My research focuses on radio science, advanced radar and radio arrays, space plasma physics, software radar, novel sensors and signal processing, and satellite instrumentation. Lynn D. Matthews Research Scientist Astrophysicist; current research focuses on study of radio emission from evolved, mass-losing stars, and the deployment of new technologies for observational radio astronomy. Dhiman R. Mondal Research Scientist I study the effects of atmospheric water vapor in geodetic combination and in the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) combination using GPS and VLBI. Timothy Morin Senior Infrastructure Engineer (IT) Arthur Niell Research Scientist My main research interest is in improving the accuracy and operability of our geodetic VLBI systems to better measure the rotation of the Earth and, combined with GPS and SLR, changes in its shape. Lenny Paritsky Space Technology Lead Engineer Leading and growing Haystack's space program. Technology development for small spacecraft, systems engineering and technical project management, space mission architecture and design. Systems, Integration, and Test lead for AERO-VISTA. Co-I of the Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths (GO-LoW). Violet Pfeiffer Radio Science Software Developer Python, Rust, C, NixOS, Astronomy, Geodesy Thushara G.S. Pillai Research Scientist I am an astrophysicist working on molecular cloud and star formation. I mainly use near-IR to radio wavelength facilities to study the multi-scale physics ISM processes including magnetic fields hat influence star formation. I participate in the developmental activities and science projects using Haystack radio telescopes. Michael Poirier Westford Antenna Site Manager As the Westford Antenna Site Manager I try to facilitate a team approach to support all programs and projects. Ganesh Rajagopalan Research Engineer Developing ultra-low-noise RF/microwave/millimeter-wave cryogenic front-end electronics and associated subsystems for radio astronomy and geodetic VLBI telescopes. Identifying and mitigating the harmful impact of radio frequency interference (RFI). William Rideout Technical Staff Software support for geospace research at MIT Haystack. I oversee the Madrigal database, and processing of ISR and GNSS data available via Madrigal. Alan E.E. Rogers Research Scientist My current focus is radio telescope design, particularly the EDGES antenna. Chester A. Ruszczyk Research Scientist VLBI instrumentation development, signal chain builds, IVS VGOS observations, and instrumentation for polar research Jason SooHoo IT Manager I am the IT Manager at the Observatory and I am also involved in several astronomy, geodesy, and space technology projects. Melanie Straight Senior Fiscal Officer Financial analysis, forecasting, budgeting, and reporting; audit and institute policy compliance; sponsor and Principal Investigator liaison; proposal submissions John Swoboda Research Scientist I'm helping to understand our near-earth space environment by developing and improving sensor technology. Michael Titus Technical Staff Haystack VLBI correlator Ryan Volz Research Scientist Radio science problems involving signal processing, statistical estimation, and novel instrumentation. Allan T. Weatherwax Research Scientist My areas of expertise are astrophysical plasma physics, geospace, auroral physics, radio emissions, wave propagation, and space weather. Shunrong Zhang Research Scientist I study geospace climatology, long-term changes, and storm-time disturbances. Immediate recent interests include studies of sub-auroral dynamics, SED/SAPS/TIDs, and more. Postdoctoral researchers Rigel Cappallo Postdoctoral Associate Collecting and analyzing EDGES data, observation and system-design for the Haystack 37-meter telescope, computer modelling of physical systems, public outreach and education. Sevag Derghazarian Postdoctoral Researcher Examining the relationship between space weather events such as TIDs, gravity waves (GWs), stratospheric and mesospheric winds, as well as global medium-scale traveling ionospheric disturbances (MSTIDs) distribution and conjugacy—their location and effect on the upper or topside ionosphere. In addition, investigating high-altitude topside irregularities using a combination of radar and satellite data. Dongjin Kim Postdoctoral Associate Astronomer; I specialize in radio observations to study radio emission or absorption from active galactic nuclei or dying stars. My research is focused on spectroscopy using radio telescopes, particularly VLBI arrays.
