NASA Funded Postdoctoral Position in Heliospheric Physics at the University of Alabama at Huntsville as part of the SHIELD DRIVE Center

The NASA funded SHIELD DRIVE Center is a five-year multi-institution effort to define, quantify, and implement all relevant physical processes needed to develop and validate a “digital twin” of the heliosphere. SHIELD is a multi-institution collaboration with researchers at BU, UAH, SWRI, Univ. of Michigan, JHU/APL, Univ. of Maryland, Univ. of Arizona, as well as international partners. The SHIELD institutions regularly collaborate remotely and meet at an annual workshop in person. Early career team members have significant opportunities to network with collaborators from other institutions, collaborate with diverse research efforts, and observational missions (IBEX/IMAP, Voyager, New Horizons), and interact with NASA management. The postdoctoral researcher will develop and execute computational tools to model the physical processes in the solar system and beyond. They will use these tools to model the transport of energetic particles, including Pickup Ions (PUI’s) and Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR’s), and their interaction with the Interstellar Medium (ISM) in and around the heliosphere, and to better understand the connection between the Sun and its surroundings. The successful candidate will work with the "Heliosphere Interaction with the LISM" team at both UAH and JHU/APL and collaborate with the broader team, including the “Code Coupling” team at University of Michigan to integrate these computer models with the Global Heliosphere model. As a team member, the successful candidate will gain insight into the entire field of the outer heliosphere, while contributing to our understanding of this important region of the Sun’s influence.

Minimum requirements include a Ph.D. in Physics, Astrophysics, Space Science, Plasma Physics, or a related field, intermediate level knowledge of plasma physics and experience of computational methods. Experience with object-oriented programming languages is also required. Knowledge of computational methods for fluid dynamics, plasma kinetics, stochastic processes, or similar subjects, expertise in the C/C++ programming familiarity with Unix/Linux OS, and experience with high performance computing are desirable.

The SHIELD team will have a significant presence at AGU and would be happy to speak with you about this opportunity.