NASA Postdoctoral Program - Understanding the drivers of time-evolving glacier motion from spaceborne observations

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 opportunity focuses on understanding the drivers of time-evolving glacier motion from spaceborne observations. One of the most consequential impacts of climate changes is an increase in ice loss from glaciers and ice sheets. Such losses are largely responsible for increasing rates of sea level rise. Despite confidence that ice loss will accelerate into the future, the magnitude of such acceleration is still highly uncertain due to still limited understanding of the rate controlling processes that modulate ice flow. A recent explosion in the number of sensors capable of measuring ice flow from space, and the maturation of projects targeted at extracting comprehensive records of ice flow (e.g. NASA's ITS_LIVE project), create a unique opportunity to apply machine learning and neural network methodologies, in conjunction with simplified ice sheet models, to advance understanding of ice sheet basal processes and their evolution through time. The successful candidate will develop methodologies to invert for time-evolving basal friction from massive volumes of surface flow observations, working under the supervision of Dr. Alex Gardner (Sea Level and Ice Group) and collaborating with researchers from across the lab and with close collaborators at M.I.T., Brown University, University of Grenoble, and the California Institute of Technology.