NASA Postdoctoral Program - Computational Modeling and Data Analysis for X-ray 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 fellowship focuses on computational modeling and data analysis near accreting compact objects such as neutron stars, stellar-mass black holes in binary systems, and supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei. The research involves modeling X-ray interactions with gas near black holes to infer physical properties including black hole spin, gas composition, temperature, and dynamics. The work encompasses developing tools for spectral fitting, Bayesian inference, reflection spectroscopy for measuring black hole spins, spectral-timing techniques for studying disk-jet-corona connections, photoionization modeling of high-density astrophysical plasmas, and machine-learning algorithms for advanced spectral-fitting. High-resolution spectroscopy, timing analysis, and polarization modeling are key aspects of the research for the next decade.