NASA Postdoctoral Program - Laboratory Kinetics of Relevance to the Earth's Atmosphere

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 research opportunity is focused on the study of elementary reactions and photochemical processes important in Earth atmosphere, with emphasis on radical-radical reactions that control the oxidizing capacity of the earth's troposphere. The work includes the study of mechanisms for the formation of urban smog and the degradation of tropospheric air quality by pollutants and biogenic hydrocarbons. Researchers will use state-of-the-art techniques for the study of reaction mechanisms and photochemical processes including laser photolysis and discharge-flow, combined with detection by laser-induced fluorescence, cavity ringdown and frequency modulation spectroscopy and chemical ionization mass spectroscopy. The position is located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, under the advisement of Dr. Carl Percival.