08/01/2024
Working at Goddard spaceflight Center
Keeping an eye for detail in multiple disciplines! 👁️ 🔎
Rebekah Hounsell works at Goddard as a Co-Principal Investigator of a Project Infrastructure Team for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and she is a support scientist for the TESS mission, helping scientists access and analyze data.
Hounsell co-leads a team of Roman scientists tasked with developing a pixels-to-cosmology pipeline to analyze supernova data from the HLTDS (High Latitude Time-Domain Survey). They will develop tools to obtain supernova lightcurves and prism spectra that are precise enough to be used in testing various cosmological modes. They are also developing tools which will allow scientists to test various HLTDS designs and adjust cadence, filters, exposure times, and more to best optimize its output for science.
As a child, living in a low-light pollution area of England led to a passion for the stars that she followed through her education at university in Liverpool, where she got a master’s in astrophysics and a Ph.D., focusing on classical and recurrent novae. In 2012, she started her first post-doctoral program at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, after which she moved to Illinois and began her second post-doctoral fellowship working on Roman, then known as WFIRST. It was during this time that she realized how much she loved working with data and on missions, leading her to take her current position at Goddard.
