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Dr. Neil Gehrels Chief Gamma Ray, Cosmic Ray and Gravitational Wave Astrophysics Branch  Neil Gehrels is head of the Gamma Ray, Cosmic Ray and Gravitational Wave Astrophysics Branch at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. His research involves building space flight instruments to observe gamma-ray emission from astronomical objects and analyzing and interpreting these data. The emphasis of his research is on explosive events in the cosmos such as gamma-ray bursts and supernovae. Dr. Gehrels is Principal investigator for NASA's Swift mission to perform multiwavelength observations of gamma-ray bursts starting in 2003. He is also Deputy Project Scientist for the NASA-led Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) mission that will launch in 2006 and a Mission Scientist for the ESA-led International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTGRAL) mission that was launched in October 2002. Previously he was the Project Scientist for the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, which flew from 1991 to 2000 as the second in NASA's series of Great Observatories. Dr. Gehrels received his Ph.D. in physics at Caltech in 1981 and has been an astrophysicist at Goddard since that time. He has written over 150 papers in the professional scientific literature, has written several popular articles in Scientific American and Physics Today, and has edited five books on gamma-ray astronomy. He received the AAS Lovelace Award (2000), the Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation (1992) and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal (1993). He is a member of the American Astronomical Society and was elected Chair of its High Energy Astrophysics Division in 1996. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. |