NASA Postdoctoral Program - Coronal and Solar Wind Models and the Data Used to Drive and Validate Them

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 working with coronal and solar wind models and/or the input data used to drive them, which is critical for reliably modeling and forecasting geomagnetic disturbance events. The modeling work involves using simple physics and empirical based models, or advanced numerical models such as magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) codes. The data aspect involves working with ground and space based solar disk observations, as well as in-situ data from multiple spacecraft to validate and/or drive the models. Work includes improving identification of coronal holes in solar disk observations and handling photospheric magnetic field observations from various solar observatories to create global maps used in models. The position is located at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, under the advisement of Charles Nickolos Arge.