My focus is in radio astronomy with primary interests in the areas of the pulsar radio-frequency emission problem, pulsars as probes of the interstellar medium, and feminist studies of science. I have published a series of papers describing a phenomenological model of pulsar radio emission, based on the study of the average and individual-pulse emission properties of pulsars. In 1999, my colleague Avinash Deshpande (of the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore) and I found a rotating (carousel) subbeam system in pulsar B0943+10, which has provided remarkable new insights into how pulsars generate their radio radiation. Together with my collaborators, I regularly make new pulsar observations using a number of different instruments. During 2001 and 2002 we conceived and started the Multi-Frequency, Multi-Observatory Pulsar Polarimetry Project (MFO) using instruments in Holland, Germany, England, India, Russian and Ukraine. I collaborate with astronomers in these and other countries and am also interested in science as it is connected to militarism, the position of the so-called "Third-World", and women's emancipation.

I earned my B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics from Southern Methodist University and my Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Iowa, where I studied under Professor James A. Van Allen.