Ceremonies held in September honored five postdoctoral scholars for their outstanding research efforts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The researchers won a competition at the lab's Postdoctoral Research Day, held in September. The day showcased the outstanding work of postdoctoral scholars in the fields of Earth Science, Astrophysics and Space Science, Planetary Science and Life Detection, and Technology, Instrumentation, and Engineering.

The winners delivered lectures on their work at the September 19th awards ceremony and were presented with commemorative plaques by JPL Chief Scientist, Dr. Dan McCleese.

Congratulations to the awardees, who are:

• Aaron Noell (Planetary Science & Life Detection) for "Rapid Bacterial Spore Detection by Time Gated Luminescence"
• Jennifer Small (Earth Science) for "Effects of Absorbing Aerosols on Cloud Fraction over Australia"
• David Galvan (Earth Science) for "Ionospheric Response to the Japanese Earthquake and Tsunami of March 11, 2011: GPS TEC Observations"
• Jingwen Wu (Astrophysics & Space Science) for "Searching for the Most Luminous Galaxies with WISE"
• Andrew Beyer (Technology, Instrumentation, and Engineering) for "Ultra-sensitive Transition-edge Sensors for the Background Limited Infrared/Sub-mm Spectrograph (BLISS) Instrument"