ICAR - Follow the Volatiles: from Protoplanetary Disks to Exoplanet Atmospheres

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 focuses on the search for spectroscopic signatures of biogenic gases in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets, a pillar of astrobiology and one of the most promising avenues for finding evidence of life beyond the Solar System. UC Santa Cruz partnered with University of Hawaii at Manoa, University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Kansas, and NASA Ames Research Center to assemble an interdisciplinary team carrying out a synergistic program of observations, laboratory experiments, and modeling to understand the journey of volatiles, particularly carbon and oxygen-containing species, from protoplanetary disks to exoplanet atmospheres. This fellowship prepares scientists for the upcoming epoch of atmospheric characterization using data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and other extremely large telescopes.