Michael Smith

ESA XMM-Newton


My relevant background is in science operations; my irrelevant
background is in the measurement of combined eye-head movements of
primates, but that's another story.

I worked for SRON at the BeppoSAX SOC for five years, mainly on
real-time data analysis software. This was an exiting time working
in an invigorating team at the onset of the "afterglow era".

In 2000 I came to Vilspa for XMM-Newton as member of the EPIC
instrument dedicated team and have since been working on
operations, monitoring and calibration.

I have in the past collaborated in little ways in the fields of
X-Ray Binaries and GRBs. Recently I have been concentrating on
X-Ray and radio observations of supernova remnants, and aim to
continue collaborating in hopefully bigger ways in this fascinating
area.