Postdoc: Geodynamic Modeling and GNSS- Crustal Deformation

Overview

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JPL is unique among NASA Centers in that its staff are Caltech employees, yet can access NASA technical resources. Cross‑discipline teamwork is standard here: colleagues across JPL’s science and engineering organizations and on Caltech’s academic campus often work together. Learning to speak and understand other disciplines’ languages is a doorway to the creativity needed to do what has not been done before.

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They are supported in developing ideas into proposals and hardware, and in communicating funded missions’ results to the scientific community and the broader public. JPL seeks to employ scientists and engineers who are passionate about lifelong learning and excited to both contribute to and lead team efforts. We emphasize the importance of partnering across discipline boundaries and creating a friendly, constructive work environment to overcome space exploration’s challenges.

The Postdoctoral scholars at JPL benefit from an informal mentoring network, an annual conference showcasing their results, a dedicated seminar series, exposure to diverse career paths, and social connections across the JPL and Caltech community for advice on housing, childcare, and other aspects of living in southern California.

This postdoc position seeks a recent Ph.D. in Geophysics or Geodesy (within the past 12 months) with demonstrated expertise in constructing and implementing geodynamic models to predict crustal deformation, with particular emphasis on plate motion. The successful candidate will develop and integrate physically based models of plate kinematics and plate boundary processes (including coseismic offsets and postseismic transients), glacial isostatic adjustment, and GRACE‑derived mass change estimates to improve GNSS time series modeling and to predict time‑dependent displacements at passive benchmarks without continuous GNSS monitoring.

Within the collaborative and mission‑driven environment of JPL, the research will leverage observations from multiple space‑geodetic techniques and satellite missions to improve predictions of crustal displacement and refine reference frame realizations. The role requires knowledge in Python and C software development, including the ability to design, maintain, and adapt modular code that translates geophysical models into operational prediction tools. Experience working with geospatial agencies, contributing to geodetic software systems, and clearly communicating technical methodologies to users is essential.

The ideal candidate will contribute a distinctive perspective from their doctoral research, particularly in applying novel field instrumentation protocols and linking them directly to algorithm development, thereby advancing model validation efforts and enabling new research directions within the project.

• Extrapolate site motion from existing geodetic time series
• Generate forward predictions based exclusively on physics‑based geodynamic models
• Develop a global plate motion and strain model derived from observations at thousands of GNSS sites
• Participate in the analysis and validation of surface mass change signals through the combined use of GPS positioning, GRACE gravity observations, and hydrological data

• Ph.D.…