NASA Postdoctoral Program - Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) propagation, magnetic connectivity, and Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs)

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 involves different aspects of modeling coronal mass ejection (CME) propagation, magnetic connectivity of observers to the Sun and CME, and solar energetic particles (SEPs) in the inner heliosphere. CME propagation modeling studies include quantifying the effect of the background solar wind through which the CME propagates, uncertainties in CME kinematic parameters, uncertainties in input magnetograms, and validating CME propagation to various locations. Comparing different models of magnetic connectivity will help understand the accuracy in the background solar wind and particle acceleration models. The CCMC is working on system to run SEP models driven by a variety of heliospheric models. This research would also involve running these coupled models (as a chain), validating and calibrating results, and improving coupling algorithms when appropriate. The fellowship is located at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.