Science of Water in the Universe

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 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory focuses on exploring the synergies between radio astronomy spectroscopy and space-based infrared observations of the Galactic interstellar medium. Specific topics include astrochemistry of galactic star forming regions, the effects of stellar radiative feedback and magnetic fields in regulating star formation, and understanding the role of metallicity in protoplanetary disk formation. The program combines spectroscopic observations using the 70-m Deep Space Network antenna at Canberra, Australia and the JPL ASTHROS stratospheric balloon with analysis of archival observations from SOFIA, Herschel, and JWST, as well as astrochemical modeling. The successful applicant will work at the forefront of observational or theoretical astrophysics, lead the publication of results, develop science cases for proposing new observations or modeling efforts, and will be encouraged to engage with relevant far-infrared mission formulation and mission concept studies.