Duilia de Mello

Duilia de Mello

(Catholic University of America and Goddard Space Flight Center)

Dr. de Mello joined GSFC/CUA in March 2003 as an HST Research Associate. and Visiting Scientist at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to this, she spent three years at the Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden as a Research Associate. Before going to Sweden she was a post-doc at Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore from 1997-1999. She was also a post-doc at Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory in Chile and National Observatory in Rio, Brazil from 1995-1997. In 1997 she discovered the supernova SN1997D using the 1.52m ESO telescope in Chile.

She received her B.A.in Astronomy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazilin 1985, an M.S.in Radio Astronomy (Brazilian Space Agency, INPE, 1988) and another in Astronomy (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, 1993) and a Ph.D.in Astrophysics from the University of Sao Paulo in 1995.

Research interest includes the role of evolution in galaxy properties; the environmental effects in galaxy evolution/formation; the properties of star-forming galaxies at low and high redshifts; the starburst/AGN connection.

Her current projects include Starbursts in the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, Star-forming galaxies at redshifts 2-3 with the Very Large Telescope; GALEX observations of Compact Groups of galaxies and HI tidal tails; and HST observations of the Ultra Deep Field in the Ultraviolet.

Parallel projects include authoring a book "Mulher das Estrelas" (Woman from the Stars) which she hopes to one day publish in Brazil in Portuguese.

Elena Sabbi

Elena Sabbi

(STScI/ESA)

I was born and raised in Bologna, Italy. I received a laurea degree in astronomy in 2000 and a PhD in astronomy 2005 in at the University of Bologna. In 2005 I moved to Baltimore as postdoctoral fellow at the STScI working on a project devoted to study the star formation process in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

I am currently a post-doc for the Astronomisches Rechen-Institut at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, and I will join STScI in February 2008 as an European Space Agency (ESA) assistant astronomer. My research interests have recently focused on star formation and stellar evolution in different environments. I am interested in pursuing the question of how star formation occurs and is affected by local and global conditions, how different dynamic conditions may influence the evolution of a stellar population, and how the evolution of stellar populations impact the chemical evolution of galaxies. In pursuing these goals, I have investigated simple stellar populations, such as young star forming regions and old globular clusters, and more complex stellar populations, as those commonly found in nearby dwarf galaxies.

The science team studying Holmberg IX comprises D. de Mello (GSFC/Catholic University of America, Washington/JHU), L. Smith (STScI/ESA/University College London), E. Sabbi (STScI), J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin, Madison), M. Mountain (STScI), and D. Harbeck (University of Wisconsin, Madison). The Hubble image of Holmberg IX was created from HST data from proposal 10605: E. Skillman (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities).