NASA Postdoctoral Program - Astrophysics: Far-Infrared, Submillimeter, and Millimeter-wave Instruments for Astronomy

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 ultrasensitive detector design, fabrication, characterization, and integration into instruments for ground-based, airborne, and space-based astrophysical investigations. Current research focuses primarily on the development of large-format arrays of sensitive bolometers using superconducting transition edge sensors, including single pixel optimization, novel noise suppression methods, and polarization sensitivity. Recent efforts include hot electron bolometers, microwave kinetic inductance detectors, and novel microstrip spectrometers. The group is heavily involved in deploying instruments for suborbital observations, including balloon-borne projects PIPER (Primordial Inflation Polarization Explorer) and EXCLAIM (EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping), as well as ground-based instruments like GISMO-2 for the 30m Millimeter Radio Telescope.