Masa's Home Page

Masa's Profile

Education

March 31, 1991	Graduate from Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Tokyo.
April 1, 1991	Enter postgraduate school, School of Science, University of Tokyo.
March 31, 1996	Complete a course of postgraduate school. & Awarded Ph.D. (Science) by the University of Tokyo.

Positions

April 1993 - March 1996	Research Fellow (DC-1) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists.
April 1996 - May 1998	Research Fellow (PD) of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science for Young Scientists. Affiliated to the Research Center for the Early Universe, School of Science, University of Tokyo.
May 1998 - June 2002	Postgraduate Researcher at the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics, University of California, Santa Cruz.
July 2002 - Present	Assistant Research Scientist at the Joint Center for Astrophysics, University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Membership

The Physical Society of Japan (1992 - Present)

The Astronomical Society of Japan (1993 - Present)

The American Astronomical Society (2006 - Present)

Research interests

Astrophysics: neutron starts, spin-powered pulsars, Crab-like supernova remnants, and clusters of galaxies
Satellite- and balloon-born experiments: instrumentation, data acquisition system, and data analysis software
Electronics: CMOS analog/digital devices, testing systems, and applications in physics experiments

Research experience

I've been working on astrophysics research projects in various ways: hardware development, software development, instrument calibration, and scientific data analysis. I'm also experienced in flight operation of balloon-born experiments and satellite experiments. I've worked on the instruments of three major astrophysics projects: the balloon-born hard X-ray detector Welcome-1 (a prototype of the ASTRO-E Hard X-ray Detector), the X-ray satellite ASCA, and the gamma-ray observatory GLAST (some works on the silicon tracker at UCSC and other works on the ACD subsystem and standard science analysis tools at NASA/GSFC). I've also been researching high-energy astrophysics with Welcome-1 and ASCA, by analyzing observation data of pulsars, supernova remnants, and clusters of galaxies.

High-energy astrophysics

My interest in astrophysics focuses mainly on spin-powered pulsars and clusters of galaxies. The attached publication list contains the science projects to which I have been a contributor; here I list the projects in which I took a lead in the collaborations.

Study of hard X-ray emissions from the Vela pulsar
Study of pulsar wind shock system at PSR B1259-63 (Ph. D work)
Spectral study of X-ray emission from PSR B0540-69 and its surrounding nebula
Temperature map of the Coma cluster of galaxies
Broadband study of X-ray emission from PSR B1706-44
Long-term pulse frequency study of PSR B0540-69 over six years
Pulse arrival time comparison of PSR B1937+21 between X-ray pulses and radio pulses

Software Development

My software experience extends to a wide variety of software, such as real-time data acquisition on a real-time operating system, ground software for in-flight calibration, off-line data analysis software, instrument simulators, automatic test station, and the relational database for the construction of the Beam-Test Engineering Model (BTEM) tracker. Most of the software codes for the projects below are written in FORTRAN, C, C++, LabVIEW, and combinations of those.

Among them, the ASCA analysis/simulation packages are the first large software project that I have worked on. For a wide variety of astrophysical applications the system provides astrophysicists with a simple and flexible programming environment to easily code their specific ideas and new analysis methods, which are unknown at the point of the system development. To make it possible, code modularity played a great role in achieving minimal interference between analysis tasks. Easy maintenance was also essential in the system development, because none of the developers was a full-time computing expert. The packages were made available to the X-ray astrophysics community and have been used by many astrophysicists for over six years until now.

Another major contribution was made to the science software for the GLAST project. Appointed as the pulsar tools manager in the development team of the GLAST LAT Standard Analysis Environment (SAE), I lead the design and development of pulsar analysis software for GLAST data, which will provide a wider astrophysics community with a set of standard tools for pulsar studies. Also, as the lead of the FITS definition working group in the SAE development team, I lead the efforts to rationalize the file formats of various data files for distribution, so that the astrophysicists at any skill level can easily familiarize themselves with GLAST data, even though GLAST is very unique as an high-energy astrophysics observatory both in its data quality and in observation strategies.

Hardware Development and Instrument Calibration

I have worked on the flight instruments of the Welcome-1 detector and the ASCA satellite, and on the GLAST BTEM/BFEM (Beam-Test Engineering Model/Balloon-Flight Engineering Model) tracker. In the Welcome-1 experiment, I participated in the development of its hardware components, the detector assembly, the performance tests, the flight operation, the instrument calibration, and the science data analysis. For the ASCA instruments, I worked on the instrument calibration of SIS (X-ray CCD camera) and XRT (X-Ray Telescope), the calibration of the absolute time assignment, software development for the calibration, the flight operation, and the science data analysis. In the GLAST tracker R & D, I performed various tests on the front-end electronics and the silicon strip detectors, developed the automatic electrical test station, and developed the construction database for the BTEM tracker construction.