About RemPlex: Leadership | PNNL

Executive Team

Tom Brouns Manager, Environmental Management Sector; Director, RemPlex	Tom Brouns develops and manages research and demonstration projects and programs for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Environmental Management and its contractors—applying his extensive technical and management experience in the disposition and remediation of chemical and nuclear waste, including processing, disposal, and subsurface cleanup. He joined PNNL in 1987 as a chemical engineer. Brouns holds BS and MS degrees in chemical engineering from Washington State University, and is a Fellow of the Waste Management Symposia.
Karen P. Smith Advisor, Environmental Assessment; Deputy Director of Operations, RemPlex	Karen P. Smith joined PNNL as a technical advisor in 2020, following 30 years at Argonne National Laboratory as an environmental scientist. She develops effective energy-related policy and regulation, with expertise in naturally occurring radioactive materials management. She holds a BA and MS in geology and a BS in anthropology from Southern Methodist University. Smith is a leader in the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Network on Environmental Management and Remediation.
Nik Qafoku Laboratory Fellow, Environmental Subsurface Science; Deputy Director of Outreach, RemPlex	Nik Qafoku joined PNNL in 2000 and was named a Laboratory Fellow in 2020. His expertise includes transport-controlled mobilization and immobilization of contaminants in heterogeneous environments. Qafoku holds a BS in agronomy and a Doctorate in soil science from the Agricultural University of Tirana, Albania. He also holds an MS in computer science and applied mathematics and a PhD in environmental soil chemistry from the University of Georgia. He is a Fellow of the Soil Science Society of America.
Inci Demirkanli Subsurface Scientist; Deputy Director of Environmental Remediation Applications, RemPlex	Inci Demirkanli is a senior scientist at PNNL who leads technical and programmatic support for the DOE Hanford Site and the Environmental Protection Agency. She focuses on analytical and numerical modeling of subsurface flow and transport with applications in remediation research and radionuclide mobility in the vadose zone and in subsurface energy and storage systems. She holds a BA in environmental engineering from Marmara University and earned her MS and PhD in environmental engineering and earth sciences at Clemson University.
Rob Mackley Environmental Engineer, Deep Vadose Zone Project Manager; Deputy Director of Collaborative Research, RemPlex	Rob Mackley manages PNNL’s Deep Vadose Zone project, which involves multidisciplinary and coordinated research to directly support the complex cleanup mission of the Hanford Site for DOE. His technical career focuses on the research and application of groundwater and remediation monitoring instrumentation; remedy development, implementation, and performance evaluation; and hydrogeologic characterization. Mackley joined PNNL in 2004 and holds BS and MS degrees in geology from Utah State University.

Advisors

Delphine Appriou Geoscientist; Advisor, RemPlex	Delphine Appriou joined PNNL in 2010. A geoscientist, she provides technical and project management for environmental remediation, geologic site characterization, geothermal energy, energy security, and environmental assessment. Appriou’s expertise in geologic carbon storage includes coordinating efforts for the FutureGen 2.0 project’s four Underground Injection Control permit applications. She earned her BS in earth sciences at the University of Maine (Le Mans); MSc in geology and environment at the University of Paris – XI, Orsay; and MSc in marine geosciences at the University of Brest—all in France.
Christian D. Johnson Senior Development Engineer; Advisor, RemPlex	Christian Johnson joined PNNL in 1992 in environmental restoration/remediation technology. He has designed and implemented ex situ and in situ bioremediation systems for the treatment of hydrocarbons and chlorinated solvents at DOE, Department of Defense, and private industry sites. Using Fortran, Visual Basic, Excel, Access, JavaScript, and SQL Server, he develops calculation tools to analyze and monitor data from subsurface contamination, including RT3D, SVEET, and SOCRATES. Johnson earned his BS and MS in chemical engineering at Washington State University.
Judy Robinson Computational Geophysics Team Leader; Advisor, RemPlex	Judy Robinson is a computational scientist with field and numerical modeling experience in geophysical methods. With PNNL since 2018, her work focuses on joint inversion using flow and transport models with electrical resistivity imaging to determine the feasibility of field electrical imaging. She has expertise in analyzing complex resistivity data using corroborating field and lab datasets. Robinson earned her BS in civil engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology, MSE in environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University, and PhD in environmental science at Rutgers University-Newark.

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