Staff Careers

The Center for Space Plasma & Aeronomic Research is seeking an accomplished mid-career researcher experienced in the field of energetic neutral atom (ENA) physics, and will be required to lead research in the field of energetic neutral atom (ENA) interactions with the large-scale heliosphere. A necessary requirement will be to apply and develop models of ENA-heliosphere interactions to observations made by the NASA IBEX and IMAP missions. The employee must have extensive experience as a researcher in the field of pickup ion physics in the heliosphere and will lead research into the extended NASA New Horizons mission. Specifically, the employee will investigate the plasma physics of pickup ions and their relation to interstellar neutral H and He, especially in the relating the physics of pickup ion to the neutral interstellar H and He ENA measurements made by the NASA IBEX and IMAP missions.

Duties / Responsibilities:

• Lead research into the physics of ENAs, and relating that to observations made by the NASA IMAP mission.
• Lead research into the plasma physics of pickup ions (PUIs) and their coupling to interplanetary and interstellar plasma environments, particularly shock waves, including interstellar neutral H. This work will include support for the NASA missions IMAP, IBEX, and New Horizons.
• Other projects related to the physics of the outer heliosphere and the local interstellar medium.

For the first two projects, the successful new hire will be expected to generate and bring research funding to the position through the successful acquisition of new grants as a PI and to support related proposals as a co-I or Collaborator.

• Ph.D - preferably in Physics (Bachelor's degree and experience in space Plasma science may be substituted for a degree)
• 1.25 to 1.5 years of verifiable full-time work experience.
• Expertise in the simulation and analysis of hydrogen energetic neutral atom (ENA) distributions and their evolution due to their interaction and coupling with the solar wind-local interstellar medium system.
• Experience in developing numerical codes that computes hydrogen ENA fluxes at 1 au for NASA’s Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) mission by post-processing 3D MHD plasma/ kinetic-neutral simulation results of the heliosphere, including the development of time-independent and dependent algorithms.
• Experience with employing MPI and distributed/shared memory algorithms in C to run the numerical simulations on multi-node computer clusters,
• Experience in visualization/analysis of the simulation and observation results in IDL, MATLAB, and Mathematica.

• Demonstrated experience, i.e., publications and presentations, in the analysis of both plasma and pickup ion data measurements made by the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP) instrument on board NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is preferred.
• Experience in analyzing and relating data measurements of pickup ions and plasma by New Horizons and other solar wind measurements by spacecraft in the supersonic solar wind and relating those observations to observations made by the IBEX-lo, IBEX-Hi instruments and to lead corresponding related observations that will be made by IMAP instruments, including IMAP-Lo, IMAP-Hi, and IMAP-Ultra, as well as IMAP plasma, magnetic field, and cosmic ray instruments is preferred.
• Evidence and expertise in delivering talks/posters at conferences and meetings are desired.
• Evidence and expertise in refereeing journal articles and NASA proposals are desired.
• Evidence and expertise in publishing original research in peer-reviewed journals are desired.
• 10 years of work experience is desired.

$110,000