Experimental Investigations in Cosmology and Astrophysics

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects at a NASA Center, NASA Headquarters, or at a NASA-affiliated research institute. These one- to three-year fellowships are competitive and are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. This specific opportunity involves experimental investigations in cosmology and astrophysics under Prof. Bock's research group. Current research opportunities include measurements of CMB polarization with BICEP Array, carrying out a field-leading search for a characteristic B-mode polarization signal from inflation through observations from the South Pole. Detectors are the enabling capability for CMB measurements, and applicants may participate in the development of focal plane arrays for the CMB Stage 4 project as well as the development of new detector technologies at the JPL Micro Devices Laboratory. The SPHEREx satellite offers opportunities in the analysis of flight data focused on constraining inflationary non-Gaussianity and assessments of the extra-galactic background light through sensitive measurements of background fluctuations. SPHEREx data also may be used for investigations over the full sky in near-infrared spectroscopy. Applicants can participate in the TIME line mapping instrument that is conducting mm-wave observations to measure the clustering amplitude of the CO and C+ emission lines from high redshifts.