NASA Postdoctoral Program - Biosignatures Detection and Interpretation

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 explores new approaches to in situ detection of extraterrestrial life in icy worlds by quantitatively distinguishing biotic from abiotic systems. One approach uses local entropy or 'order' which is reduced by life by preferentially consuming and synthesizing some compounds over others and causing more even distribution within the abiotic compounds. Various analytical and modeling techniques are explored to answer a key research question in Astrobiology: Can non-biological processes mimic a particular biosignature, and if yes, how can we distinguish these false positives. This postdoctoral research position is located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.