Oswald has worked at SSL since receiving his Ph.D. at The University College London in 1982. His initial work was in developing the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer satellite payload sensor instrumentation. Since that time he has continued development of advanced photon counting sensors though a number of research grants in applications for Astrophysics, High Energy Physics, radiation detection, biological imaging and ground based astronomy. These developments have facilitated implementation of many NASA missions. As a Co-I Oswald has led the development of sensor systems on SOHO (UVCS, SUMER and CDS), EUVE, ALEXIS, COS-HST, GALEX, FUSE, ICON, and GOLD. He was also responsible for development of instruments for ORFEUS/ASTROSPAS, FAUST, CHIPS, SPEAR, EMM-EMUS and many sub-orbital rockets. GOLD has recently been successfully commissioned and is now successfully collecting UV spectroscopic data for Earth’s upper atmosphere. Oswald is part of the Cosmic Origins Technical Interest Group (TIG) .

Oswald has published more than 400 papers as a first or co-author covering topics ranging from the physics of photon detection to biological time resolved imaging, stellar UV spectroscopy and fast time domain Astrophysical observations. He has 16 NASA individual and group awards, a Templeton Foundation Career Award, and is a co-recipient of the SPIE George W. Goddard award. Oswald has been the Chair and organizer for a long running series of conferences (>20) on Astronomical instrumentation.