After receiving my Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, I spent some years on the research staff of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The Johns Hopkins University, where I was Deputy Project Scientist for the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope during its development and flight on the Astro-1 space shuttle mission.
I joined NASA Goddard in 1990 and served as Instrument Scientist and Co-Investigator for the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) through its development and successful installation on HST in 1997 and its continuing scientific operations. I was also been a Co-Investigator on the HST/Advanced Camera for Surveys.
From 2002 to 2009 I served as Project Scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope Development Project. Among my duties in that position was serving as Instrument Scientist for the Wide Field Camera 3, a powerful wideband imager that was installed during HST Servicing Mission 4 and which has been carrying out a highly successful observing program since.
In October 2009, I joined the James Webb Space Telescope program as Integration and Test Project Scientist, participating in the remarkable cryo-vacuum test programs that prepared the payload for flight. With the approach of launch, my position was modified to be Integration, Test, and Commissioning Project Scientist. Now that Webb has launched and commissioning is complete (!), rendering all of those former titles obsolete, I am currently the Webb Deputy Senior Project Scientist/Technical.