Giuseppina Fabbiano

Senior Astrophysicist, Smithsonian Institution
Giuseppina Fabbiano is Senior Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO), a member of the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) | Harvard & Smithsonian, in Cambridge MA, USA.
After completing her studies in Physics at the University of Palermo (Italy) in 1973, Fabbiano joined the group led by Riccardo Giacconi at the CfA that became the major center for X-ray Astronomy worldwide. She was a scientist in the data management teams of the NASA UHURU mission, the first X-ray astronomy satellite, and the HEAO-1/A3 mission. As project scientist for the Einstein Observatory, she was responsible for the data processing system, and was a key member of the successful proposing team for the NASA Chandra X-ray Center (CXC). Today, she is the Head of the CXC Data Systems Division, with oversight of the software, hardware and system groups, as well as the Chandra data processing and archive.
Fabbiano is an active astrophysicist, with over 760 highly cited publications (280 refereed). She is a leader in the observational studies of populations of X-ray sources in galaxies, the hot interstellar medium, and the interaction between nuclear massive black holes and the host galaxy. She is the author of two invited reviews in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Fabbiano is a co-author of the Smithsonian Institution Digitization Strategic Plan (for 2010-2015) and of the 2009 report of the US Interagency Working Group on Digital Data ‘Harnessing the Power of Digital Data for Science and Society’. She chairs the US Virtual Observatory Alliance and is a member of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA) executive committee, which she chaired in 2016-2018.
Fabbiano is a member of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) and the International Astronomical Union (IAU), an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Member and former Trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics.