Position Description

Built six decades ago, UC Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL) was the realization of NASA’s vision to gather many of the most innovative and dedicated science minds in one place at Berkeley. In the hill above Berkeley, physicists, researchers, biologists, engineers and technicians worked in unison: interacting, learning from one another, leading, challenging and inspiring one another in creating cutting-edge space science instrumentation and conducting top research. Through sixty years of NASA-funded support, their efforts, and those of hundreds of dedicated students and staff, have brought about myriad highlights, such as the space science missions of S3-3, ISEE, Polar, Van Allen Probes, Cluster, IMAGE, THEMIS and MAVEN. All have contributed to new discoveries about the physics of space, and initiated marked new advances in engineering technology.
The General Antiparticle Spectrometer (GAPS) is a NASA funded high altitude balloon mission, designed to detect antinuclei (antiprotons, antideuterons, and antihelium) in cosmic rays with high sensitivity, as messengers of dark matter processes in the galaxy. We are searching for a Postdoctoral Scholar with strong instrumentation experience who will join us as we prepare our payload for an Antarctic high-altitude balloon flight.
The instrument includes several technologies such as silicon radiation detectors, custom electronics, thermal systems, monitoring sensors and computers. We are interested in someone who is self-motivated and proactive in a laboratory setting. You will be working closely with our experienced team of engineers at the Space Sciences Laboratory and the larger GAPS collaboration. Key job duties include:
• Participating in simulations and flight data analysis and in our international science collaboration by giving presentations on video conferences and collaboration meetings
• Preparing papers for publication
• Instrument and payload mechanical, electrical and software integration
• Instrument calibration
• Functional and environmental (thermal/vacuum) testing
• Participation in integration and launch campaigns
• Operating the payload and instrument in flight