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. 

Recently, she is enjoying exploring more massive stars, and exoplanets through machine learning and through gravitational microlensing.

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 VLTI, CHARA, ALMA, and Keck.

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

You can download Dr. Rau full CV by clicking here.