NASA Postdoctoral Program - Organic Capillary Electrophoresis Analysis System (OCEANS) Protocol Development and Validation on Astrobiology Analog Samples

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 postdoctoral position is available in microscale chemical analysis in the Microdevices Laboratory at JPL. This research will involve the development and validation of separation protocols for biomarker compounds using capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS). The ultimate goal of this effort is to lay the foundation for a life detection mission to an ocean world such as Europa or Enceladus seeking chemical signatures of life. Primary chemical targets of interest are amino acids, carboxylic acids, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The fellowship will involve development of methods for chiral analysis of amino acids using CE-MS, optimization of limits of detection, and analysis of ocean world analog samples collected from sites such as Lake Vostok, Taylor glacier, or deep ocean water.