Planetary Magnetospheres Laboratory
Dr. Cynthia Cheung
Planetary Magnetospheres Laboratory
NASA/GSFC, Code 695 Greenbelt, MD 20771 Phone: (301) 286-2780 Email: Dr. Cynthia Cheung |
Current Position
- Space Scientist, Planetary Magnetospheres Lab
Education
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1980 - Ph.D., Astronomy, University of Maryland
1972 - A.B. (with Distinction), Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley
Professional Societies
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American Astronomical Society
International Astronomical Union - Member of Working Group 5 on Astronomical Data
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers - Society of Computational Intelligence
Research Expertise
Dr. Cheung is a member of the Autonomous Nano-Technology Swarm (ANTS) group in the Solar System Exploration Division. She is the project manager responsible for the development and operation of ANTS tetrahedral robotic prototypes. She leads several GSFC Internal R&D projects to develop critical robotic technologies for the Exploration Initiative. She currently supports the Magnetospheric Multi-Scale (MMS) mission in end-to-end science data system development, and was the MMS Deputy Project Scientist from 2002-2005. She was a member of the GSFC Distributed Space System (DSS) Tiger Team (2000-2002) to develop advanced concepts for multi-spacecraft missions and was the technical lead in the area of data acquisition, processing, fusion and analysis. She was awarded a GSFC Research Fellowship in 2001-2002 to study DSS space-to-space and space-to-ground communications at the University of Maryland Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communication Networks. As Head of the Astronomical Data Center (ADC) till September 2002, she managed an online digital repository of several thousand astronomical catalogs for the international scientific community. She spearheaded the application of the eXtensible Markup Language and related Internet technology in both data interchange with other data centers and long-term data storage. She gained extensive experience in program management while employed as a contractor at NASA HQ Astrophysics Division (1986-1992). She worked as an Operations Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in 1982-1986.
EPO Experience
Dr. Cheung has been a mentor to students since 1992 in various GSFC internship programs (SIECA, SIP, Sister Program, National Space Club Scholars, Public Service Internship, Senior Research Practicum, and the Robotics Academy). As the Project Manager of the Tetrahedral Robotics, she hosted the largest team of student interns (20–30 each year) from nine internship programs (including NASA Academy, SESI, Robotics Academy, and USRP) from 2004 to 2007. She integrated the student activities with the R&D tasks performed by scientists and engineers to build three tetrahedral robotic prototypes.
Dr. Cheung is the PI of the Lunar and Planetary Science Academy, a residential summer internship program to educate the next-generation NASA workforce in lunar and planetary science exploration. She is also the EPO lead for the Goddard Center for Astrobiology.
Professional Experience
2002 - present: Space Scientist, Planetary Magnetospheres Laboratory
1992 - 2002: Astrophysicist, Astrophysics Data Facility
Selected Publications
2007 Curtis, S.A. & Cheung, C. et al., "Tetrahedral Robotics for Space Exploration", IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine, June 2007, Vol. 22, No. 6, pp. 22-30.
2004 Cheung, C.Y., Shaya, E.J., Curtis, S.A, Hollenhorst, R.J., Rilee, M.L & Clark, P.E., "ANTS and the Distributed Synthesis Architecture," 2004 International Aeronautics Conference, Vancouver, Canada, October 2004.
2004 Cheung, C.Y., Curtis, S.A, Rilee, M.L & Oberright, J.E., "MNT-based Gossamer Space Frame," CAENUS Micro-Nano Technology Conference, Monterey, California, November 2004.
2004 Cheung, C.Y., Curtis, S.A, Yeh, P.S., Rilee, M.L & Clark, P.E., "Intelligent Systems in the Evolvable ANTS Architecture," IEEE Intelligent Systems Technology Conference, Chicago, Illinois, September 2004.
2004 Curtis, S.A., Clark, P.E. & Cheung, C.Y., "The Central Role of Reconnection in Space Plasma Phenomena Targeted by the Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission," Workshop on Multiscale Coupling in Sun-Earth Processes, Kona, Hawaii, February 2004 (Elsevier), pp. 473-486.
2003 Burns, R.D., Cheung, C., Davis, G., Cary, E. & Higinbotham, J. 2003, " A System for Real-Time, Closed-Loop, Multi-Spacecraft Mission Simulation Applications," AIAA Conference on Modeling and Simulation, 2003.
2003 Thomas, B., Shaya, E. & Cheung, C., "A Proposed Model for Inter-satellite Information Exchange using a High-Level Syntax-Oriented Language" GSFC IR&D Report.
2003 Chen, Y.Y., Hadjitheodosiou, M. & Cheung, C.Y., "Optimizing Communications for Constellation Space Missions," AIAA Conference at Yokohama, Japan, March 2003.
2001 Cheung, C. "Distributed Archive Interoperability," Virtual Observatory of the Future, Eds. R.J. Brunner, et al., ASP Conf. Series, Vol. 225, p. 316 (Author).
2000 Cheung, C. & Leisawitz, D., "New Frontiers in NASA Data Management," in Information Handling in Astronomy, Ed. A. Heck (Kluwer), pp. 45-63.
