NASA Postdoctoral Program - ICAR - Tracing Rocky Exoplanet Compositions

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented U.S. and non-U.S. scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects. This specific fellowship opportunity focuses on the TREC (Tracing Rocky Exoplanet Compositions) research team, which investigates the range of chemical compositions on rocky exoplanets, particularly their surfaces, and which chemical variations matter most for climate, habitability, and detectability of life. The research program determines starting compositions of stellar systems and chemical changes occurring within protoplanetary disks, during planetary differentiation, magma ocean crystallization, and mantle-surface interactions over geologic time. The goal is to derive statistical distributions of surface abundances of key elements including rock-forming elements, radionuclides, volatiles, and bioessential elements. These one- to three-year competitive fellowships are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science, Earth science, aeronautics, space operations, exploration systems, and astrobiology. Fellows are expected to attend the Astrobiology Graduate Conference (AbGradCon) and/or the Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) using travel funds conferred as part of the award.