CCMC' Space Weather Research Center – Forecasting for NASA's robotic missions

Yaireska (Yari) Collado-Vega

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Yaireska (Yari) Collado-Vega received her PhD in Space Physics from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC with honors in January 2013. She is originally from Ponce, Puerto Rico, and has been part of the NASA GSFC family since August 2004. She received both her BS and MS in theoretical physics from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, Puerto Rico, in 2004 and 2007 respectively.  Dr. Collado-Vega is currently part of the Space Weather Laboratory at the Heliophysics Science Division working with the Community Coordinated Modeling Center/Space Weather Research Center team within the same laboratory.  She is a senior space weather forecaster, a research scientist and a public education specialist for the team.  She is involved on the metrics and validation effort of the available space weather models and has conducted/published research on the solar wind-magnetosphere interaction.  She is also involved as part of an inter-divisional collaborative group at NASA GSFC that is working on the development of a Soft X-Ray magnetopause imager. In recent years, she has also participated in scientific projects and proposals of significance to NASA and ESA missions, and to the development of data mining tools. Dr. Collado-Vega has presented on many international and domestic scientific conferences.  She is also currently the Science and Exploration Directorate representative in the New Developing Professional Advisory Committee at NASA GSFC where she formerly served as a co-chair for 3 years.  She has also received many awards, and is the space weather scientist specialist for the education outreach program of the Heliophysics Education Consortium (HEC).