Dr. Analia Nilda Cillis

About

As the first in my family to attend university—my Italian immigrant grandparents couldn’t finish elementary school—I earned my Physics degree from the University of Buenos Aires and Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of La Plata (both in Argentina), specializing in ultra-high energy cosmic rays with the Pierre Auger Collaboration.
My NASA Goddard career began in 2002 as a National Research Council Research Associate in gamma-ray astronomy. I subsequently worked at HEASARC and the FERMI Science Support Center (2004-2009), developing scientific software for FERMI data analysis. I then served as tenured Research Scientist at CONICET Argentina (2009-2014), leading funded research as Principal Investigator while remaining affiliated with FERMI and joining the Cherenkov Telescope Array Consortium.
My research spans ultra-high-energy cosmic rays, gamma-ray astronomy, blazars, supernova remnants, and pulsar wind nebulae. With an h-index of 25 and over 9,800 citations, I have made significant astrophysics contributions. I taught physics at the University of Buenos Aires (1995-2001) and translated NASA’s StarChild website into Spanish, reaching tens of millions of children across 20 countries.
Since 2014, working for UMBC at NASA Goddard’s Detector Characterization Laboratory, I have led performance testing of hundreds of infrared detectors for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, Euclid, CASE/ARIEL, and strained-layer superlattice detectors for Earth science missions.
I am most proud of testing Roman’s Wide Field Instrument through all development stages. I led flight detector analysis, testing approximately 100 detectors throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, identified critical anomalies during thermal vacuum testing, and conducted specialized count-rate nonlinearity and radiation testing.
As Roman’s launch approaches, I am preparing commissioning activities including detector monitoring and guidance system testing. Looking ahead, I will test Habitable Worlds Observatory prototypes—fulfilling childhood dreams of contributing to humanity’s search for life beyond Earth.
After more than a decade on Roman, I am proud to be part of the team that assembled this groundbreaking observatory that will revolutionize our understanding of dark matter, dark energy, and exoplanets.