NASA Postdoctoral Program - Laboratory Studies of Chemistry on Titan's Surface

The NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) offers unique research opportunities to highly-talented scientists to engage in ongoing NASA research projects. This specific opportunity focuses on laboratory studies of chemistry on Titan's surface at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, possesses a thick nitrogen atmosphere and a surface dominated by organic molecules. The research group performs experiments to study chemical processes that control the evolution and composition of Titan's surface, including solubility, precipitation, photochemistry and low temperature thermal reactions using various spectroscopy techniques. Current research focuses on the formation of organic co-crystals at low temperature, the reactivity of carbon dioxide with amines to form carbamic acid, and developing ultraviolet and infrared fiber optic probes for in situ chemical characterization of Titan's lakes. These competitive fellowships are designed to advance NASA's missions in space science and provide one to three years of support for postdoctoral researchers.