Dr. Valerie Connaughton

Dr. Valerie Connaughton is the Program Scientist for the UltraViolet Explorer (UVEX), NASA’s most-recently selected Explorer, Israel Space Agency’s Ultraviolet Satellite (ULTRASAT), and ESA’s X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM). She leads the Time-Domain and Multi-Messenger Astronomy (TDAMM) Initiative, the High-Energy technology development portfolio of the Astrophysics Division at NASA Headquarters, is a Discipline Scientist for the Particle Astrophysics portfolio, and is the Program Scientist for the Physics of the Cosmos Program. 

She obtained her Ph.D. from University College Dublin in the area of ground-based Very High Energy gamma-ray astronomy before taking up a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. As a research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, she transitioned from the Burst And Transient Source Experiment (BATSE) team to the Gamma-ray Burst Monitor (GBM) team on the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope, which has been in orbit since 2008. In 2015 she joined Universities Space Research Association (USRA) as associate director of the Science and Technology Institute (STI) where she oversaw STI's activities in the areas of astrophysics (x-ray, gamma-ray, and cosmic-ray science).  

Her research interests include multi-messenger time-domain astronomy, gamma-ray bursts, terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, and high-energy astrophysics in general. She has been at NASA Headquarters since late 2017, where she has learned to appreciate photons of all energies.

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