Joby has been awarded a NASA postdoctoral fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California

For this project, Joby will be working on a deep-UV Raman/Fluorescence spectrometer that is part of the Mars 2020 rover’s scientific payload. The goal of the mission is to look for mineralogical and chemical signs of past life on Mars, or at least previous habitability. The Raman instrument (known as SHERLOC) will be used to detect and identify any organic compounds present, even at extremely low concentrations.

Joby’s expertise in the Raman/fluorescence of conjugated molecules, from his time at the CPE, will help him calibrate the instrument and develop analytical techniques that can handle the complex spectra generated by unpredictable samples in a literally alien environment.

During his MRes and PhD in the PE-CDT (Cohort 3), Joby's project was based on thin film morphology. He was supervised by Prof Ji-Seon Kim (Department of Physics, Imperial College).