Padi Boyd is currently a Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters, with the Science Mission Directorate's Office of the Deputy Associate Administrator for Research. Before moving to Headquarters in 2022, she served as the Chief of the Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics Laboratory in the Astrophysics Science Division, and the Project Scientist for the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) Mission (a NASA Explorer Mission launched in 2018). She arrived at Goddard 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.
Boyd was part of the Monitoring X-ray Experiment team, an X-ray all-sky monitor, and the Rossi X-ray Timing Experiment Guest Observer Facility performing science support for that mission. She managed that facility, as well as the Swift Science Center. Additioinal management positions at Goddard included Deputy Project Scientist for Operations of the Hubble Space Telescope, Associate Chief of the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory, Acting Deputy Director of the Astrophysics Division, and Associate Director of the Astrophysics Division.
At NASA Headquarters, she previously served as the program scientist for the Kepler mission, and was the NASA point of contact for the MOST U.S. Guest Observer program, and also served as a discipline scientist for X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy. She was also the Program Officer for the Origins of Solar Systems Exoplanets program.
Her research interests focus on applying traditional and novel time series and spectral analysis techniques to uncover the drivers of stellar variability, and accretion in compact binaries and active galaxies, using data from a variety of space telescopes.