NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship - Solid-State Gamma-ray Instrument Development for Future Astroparticle Missions

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 high-energy gamma-ray astronomy and the study of cosmic explosions, cosmic accelerators and fundamental physics. The fellowship involves simulation and development of radiation-hard, low-power solid state detectors, such as silicon photomultipliers (SiPMs), silicon pixel detectors, and silicon strip detectors at the Astroparticle physics lab at Goddard Space Flight Center. Research topics include low level detector design and characterization, read-out electronics development (both analog and digital), software development (including simulations and firmware), and instrument design. The hardware developed in this opportunity is specifically focused on astrophysics studies enabled by future medium or high energy gamma-ray missions such as AMEGO, and is also applicable to several upcoming Heliophysics opportunities including Lunar Gateway and the PRISM opportunity.