Facilitator & Presenters

• Dr. Erika Hamden

  Dr. Erika Hamden is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Arizona and Director of the University of Arizona Space Institute. She specializes in building ultraviolet telescopes, which operate from the stratosphere and in orbit.

• Dr. Jose Silva

  Dr. Jose Silva has a master’s degree in Nanotechnology Engineering from the New University of Lisbon, Portugal, and a doctorate in Astronomy (instrumentation) from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Jose has spent the last eight years developing the technology required for the detector arrays at the heart of the GUSTO instrument having built the three detector arrays that flew in GUSTO.

• Tim Rehm

  Tim Rehm is a sixth-year PhD student at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Tim has been working on the EXCITE mission since 2020, specializing in the mechanical design of the mission’s cryogenic system. He also works to understand how correlated systematics affect the signal measured by the detector of a high-precision pointing instrument from a balloon platform. Tim models and detrends balloon systematics from simulated signals to determine EXCITE’s ability to meet its science requirements during balloon flight.

• Dr. Martha Irene Saladino (Facilitator)

  Dr. Martha Irene Saladino is an Education & Outreach Scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute, where she supports the outreach efforts of different NASA missions and projects, including the upcoming Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, and NASA’s Universe of Learning. Martha Irene obtained her Ph.D. in Astrophysics at Radboud University in the Netherlands, where she developed numerical simulations of evolved Sun-like double stars. Outside of work, Martha Irene enjoys running, reading, and digital illustration.