Dr. Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy

LEP, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Over the past two decades, Dr. Nat Gopalswamy has been engaged in solving problems in solar and solar terrestrial physics using data from various large radio telescopes and space missions, particularly coronal mass ejections. He has considerable expertise in the analysis of multi-wavelength data (X-ray, EUV, optical and radio). In the recent years, he has been extensively involved in the analysis of Yohkoh, SOHO, Wind and ACE data in conjunction with radio and optical images obtained by ground based instruments.

Notable achievements: 1. Established the Center for Solar Physics and Space Weather at the Catholic University of America to train students and post-doctoral fellows in the physics of Sun-Earth connections. 2. Created a "Coordinated Data Analysis (CDAW) Data Center and an online catalog of more than 3000 CMEs, available on-line for the scientific community. 3. Conducted a CDAW workshop in 1999 followed by an international conference in 2000, which resulted in the publication of more than two dozen scientific papers in the Geophysical Research Letters (May 2000) and Journal of Geophysical Research (October 2001).

Some of the notable discoveries, in which Dr. Gopalswamy was a lead-author: 1. First detection of radio CME (1992), 2. the transient microwave brightenings (1995), 3. three-part CME using non-coronagraphic observations (1996), 4. Effective interplanetary acceleration (2000), 5. Colliding CMEs (2001).

Dr. Gopalswamy is a member of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the American Astronomical Society and the American Geophysical Union; is a member of the Organizing committee of the IAU Commission 10 for 1997-2003; is a member of the steering committee and meeting coordinator of the Solar Heliospheric and Interplanetary Environment (SHINE) group.

As of September 2001, Dr. Gopalswamy has 128 scientific publications, 90 of them in refereed journals. Detailed list of publications can be found in the curriculum vitae.

Dr. Gopalswamy received his PhD (1982) from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics , Bangalore and post-doctoral training at the University of Maryland, College Park (1985). He was an Associate Research Scientist in the Astronomy Department until 1997. He became a Research Professor at Catholic U. from 1997 and recently moved to GSFC as an astrophysicist.