NASA Postdoctoral Program - Heliospheric Flux Rope

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 heliospheric flux ropes (FRs), which are dynamically evolving structures in the heliosphere. The research project aims to study the spatiotemporal variations of FRs, inspect the dependence of FR local deformation on the ambient environments, and quantify the impact of FR evolution on their structures and intrinsic properties. The applicant is expected to use physics-based models to define the in-situ observed FR structure (preferentially probed at multiple locations) and to quantify their evolution and erosion. In addition, to facilitate the FR research and space weather forecasting, the project aims to improve existing machine learning architecture to identify FRs and their orientations automatically using solar wind data.