Derck Massa

Senior Research Scientist
Silver Spring, MD
Derck received his BA in Physics from Chico State College in 1967 and, after a hiatus of several years, returned to academia for a PhD in Astrophysics from CU Boulder. Upon completing a Post-Doc at UW Madison, he joined Applied Research Corporation as a NASA contractor at Goddard Space Flight Center, where he split his time between NASA projects and research. His project work centered on instrument characterization and calibration and science data pipeline design for several spacecraft, including COBE, IUE, and FUSE. Before joining SSI, he was an Instrument Scientist at STScI, involved in the calibration and characterization of the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph on HST. Over the years, Derck's research has focused on interstellardust, the winds of hot stars, binary Cepheids and various calibration issues. He has been a PI on guest observing programs for NASA missions spanning the electromagnetic spectrum, including IUE, HST, FUSE, Chandra and Spitzer. At SSI, his research involves the winds of LMC O stars, the cause of wind variability in the central stars planetary nebula, the systematics of dust absorption in the local interstellar medium and the origin of IR excesses in LMC and SMC O and B stars. He enjoys almost anything with wheels.