Dr. Gioia Rau is an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where she works on cool evolved stars and exoplanets science.

She is also a Faculty Research Assistant Professor at CUA.

Her scientific interests range from studying K-M giant stars and Asymptotic Giant Branch (AGB) stars, investigating their physical properties and evolution, to exoplanets.

She is particularly interested in studying the outer atmosphere of cool evolved stars by means of chromosphere and above, combining interferometric techniques with high-resolution spectroscopic data from the Hubble Space Telescope. 

She also enjoys exploring more massive stars, and exoplanets through artificial intelligence techniques, and through gravitational microlensing. She is passionate about ideating and building mission concept in development, and about supervising and mentoring students. 

Her research is based on data that herself and others have obtained using NASA space telescopes such as HST, and TESS, and ground-based telescopes such as, among others, VLTI, CHARA, ALMA, and Keck.

Dr. Rau holds a doctoral degree from the University of Vienna, where she graduated in 2016.