Biography

Harouaka has been a postdoc in the National Security Directorate for the last two years. She received a dual title PhD in geoscience and astrobiology from Penn State in 2016 and did a postdoc in petroleum geochemistry at Rice University before joining the Low Background Materials group at PNNL. Here, she uses inductively coupled plasma – tandem mass spectrometry to measure ultra-trace quantities of radio-contaminants in detector materials for high-energy and nuclear physics “rare event” experiments (e.g., dark matter detection, neutrinoless double beta decay). She dedicates the “reaction roulette” project to all grad students/scientists who have spent far too many days doing ion exchange column chemistry.