Our Team

The EMAC Team at NASA Goddard includes both exoplanet scientists and research assistants as well as computer scientists, web developers, and back-end database and cloud developers. If you see us around, don’t hesitate to ask us about EMAC! Our email:

Eric D. Lopez
Dr. Eric D. Lopez is the deputy lead for EMAC. Dr. Lopez is an exoplanet theorist specializes in models of planetary structure, composition, evolution, and atmospheric escape. He received his PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz and is a NASA civil servant at Goddard in the Planetary Systems lab.

Joe Renaud
Joe Renaud has been a post-doctoral planetary scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center since 2019. His research focuses on the interior, thermal, and orbital evolution of planets and moons within our Solar System and beyond. Joe is helping the EMAC team showcase the great resources that are hosted on the site, as well as explore new ways that EMAC can connect to the exoplanetary community.

Avi Mandell
Avi Mandell is a research scientist in the Planetary Systems Laboratory at NASA Goddard, and his research work focuses on exoplanet characterization and atmospheric modeling. He is a past Principle Investigator for EMAC and a previous Director of the Sellers Exoplanet Environments Collaboration (SEEC), the cross-disciplinary exoplanet research team at GSFC.

Mike Moore
Mike Moore is a software and cloud engineer serving as the principal customer experience engineer for the Goddard Private Cloud. Mike supports EMAC directly as a member of the team and via GPC where EMAC and many other SEEC research projects, such as the Planetary Spectrum Generator (PSG) are run. Mike’s passion is to merge minds in the computing field with those in the hard sciences to advance the understanding of our universe through a novel synergy between the two disciplines to achieve better tools, faster results, and lower costs.

Dylan Cristy
Dylan Cristy is a software developer for EMAC. He has extensive experience developing custom SharePoint solutions in support of the Flight Projects Directorate at Goddard Space Flight Center, and has also developed educational interactive applications used for some of Goddard's public outreach efforts, and in displays at the GSFC Visitor Center.

Ashraf Dhahbi
Ashraf Dhahbi is a recent Williams College graduate working as a post-baccalaureate research assistant under Avi Mandell and Joe Renaud. His work for EMAC involves adding resources to the catalog and partially automating the process. He is interested in the formation of planets in protoplanetary disks, their evolution beyond that, and the physical conditions that influence planetary processes.

EMAC Alumni

Carl Hostetter
Carl Hostetter is the EMAC system architect and lead software developer. He has been a Computer Engineer at NASA GSFC for over 30 years, and has developed desktop, mobile, and web applications and architectures in C, C#, Java, Objective-C, Python, and Swift.

Apexa Patel
Apexa Patel is a past software developer for EMAC. She has experience developing websites with HTML, Django (a Python web-app framework), JavaScript, and JQuery, and keeps EMAC responsive on both desktop and mobile browsers using the Foundation CSS framework. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science.

Yoni Brande
Yoni Brande is a past research assistant in the Planetary Systems Lab; his research work included the detection and characterization of transiting exoplanets, and simulated JWST observations.

Marshall Sutton
Marshall Sutton is a past software developer for EMAC. He has previously done work as an application developer, data engineer, and cost analyst at Goddard Space Flight Center. He supports all things Python. He holds Master’s degree in applied mathematics from the University of Washington.

Carlos E. Cruz-Arce
Carlos E. Cruz-Arce is a past research assistant in the Planetary Systems Laboratory at NASA Goddard. His astronomical interests include exoplanet detection and characterization with the goal of inspiring the next generation of scientist and engineers to explore the cosmos.

Cameron Kelahan
Cameron Kelahan is a past Research Assistant for the Planetary Systems Lab at Goddard Space Flight Center, where he assisted the EMAC team with community outreach and web-tool development. He has past experience with applying machine learning to predict the presence of Mega Masers in galaxies.

Nick Susemiehl
Nick Susemiehl is a past member of EMAC's science support team, and was a post-baccalaureate research assistant under Avi Mandell. As part of his work with EMAC, Nick assisted in the curation of new tools, contributed towards the site's outreach efforts, and helped guide the development of EMAC from the perspective of a scientist. Outside of EMAC, Nick is still involved in other GSFC projects working on the development of exoplanetary atmospheric retrieval code.

Ted Johnson
Ted Johnson is a past member of EMAC's science support team. His work for EMAC involved software recruitment and interaction with the EMAC community. His research interests focus on the detection and characterization of rocky exoplanets.