NASA Postdoctoral Program - Polymer Aerogels

The NASA Postdoctoral Program 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 developing light weight, nanoporous polymer and polymer-ceramic hybrid aerogels for aerospace power, sensing communication and propulsion applications. Other potential applications include airframe and space structures. Areas of investigation include the development of new chemistries that can be used to form aerogels, and incorporation of nano-sized fillers such as clay or metal nanoparticles, graphene or carbon nanotubes to form nanocomposite aerogels with novel properties. Research activities encompass polymer and monomer synthesis and characterization, polymer and aerogel processing, mechanical behavior of aerogels, and mechanistic studies of aerogel cure and degradation. Emphasis is placed on both the development of improved materials and on achieving a fundamental understanding of materials behavior at the molecular level. This research is well supported by state-of-the-art facilities at Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio.