Biography

Dr. Elizabeth Denis is a chemist with a research background in geoscience, chemistry, and biogeochemistry. Her technical expertise includes instrumentation for chemical analyses (e.g., gas chromatography, elemental analysis, mass spectrometry, isotope ratio mass spectrometry), and she has extensive research, method development, and laboratory and field experiences in organic geochemistry, biogeochemistry, and analytical chemistry.

Denis' work entails project development, project management, leadership, laboratory analyses, data interpretation, and scientific communication. Examples of current and recent projects at PNNL include: 1) Developing and optimizing trace chemical detection of organic residues and vapors using mass spectrometry; 2) Leading a team studying the sorption chemistry of volatile organic compounds and geologic materials; 3) Serving as principle investigator for research to advance the ability to manipulate ions at atmospheric pressure for improved sensitivity for mass spectrometry and ion mobility spectrometry; and 4) Using isotope and elemental chemistry, as well optical coherence tomography, to investigate plant-soil-microbial interactions and nutrient cycling.

Her passion for pushing the limits of our understanding of chemistry has driven her toward method development-focused research. Denis was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and earned her PhD in geosciences and biogeochemistry from the Pennsylvania State University. For her PhD, she investigated the production (e.g., from wildfires) and preservation of organic carbon in soils and marine sediments during a past climate warming event. She was a geoscience intern in the energy industry at Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips for two summers. 

Elizabeth earned a BS with honors in geology-chemistry from Brown University. For her thesis research she used aromatic hydrocarbons in lake sediments to reconstruct wildfire history using liquid and gas chromatography with fluorescence detectors and mass spectrometry.