Ana Arteaga received her PhD from Oregon State University under the mentorship of Dr. May Nyman. Ana’s dissertation work focused on studying the formation of uranyl peroxide clusters in solution and the solid state using a wide range of X-ray and spectroscopic techniques.  

Ana is currently a member of the Nuclear & Radiochemistry team in the Global Nuclear Science and Technology group in the National Security Directorate. She is mentored by Robert Gian Surbella. Her current research focuses on leveraging well-defined trivalent actinide (Pu, Am, Cm) oxide nanocluster chemistry to delineate periodic trends in the electronic and coordination environments, physical and chemical properties in solution, and the solid state to address the need to advance fundamental transuranic chemistry.

Jeremy Gaison earned his PhD in physics from Yale University. He conducted research at Wright Laboratory under his advisor, Karsten Heeger, and he was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. His work focused on developing and implementing novel detection techniques for neutrinos produced in nuclear reactors. Jeremy also has a BS in physics and mathematics from Drexel University.

Jeremy is continuing his work developing new detector technologies as part of the Fundamental Physics group at PNNL under the guidance of Brent Vandevender. By characterizing radio frequency signals of electrons undergoing cyclotron motion in a magnetic field, Jeremy aims to measure the mass scale of neutrinos. This measurement will have broader implications for cosmology and pave the way for other precision measurements of nuclear processes.

Bram Stone earned his PhD in biology from the University of Mississippi, where he studied the ecological patterns of bacterial communities on plant leaves under Colin Jackson. Following his doctoral research, he worked as a postdoctoral scholar with Bruce Hungate at the Center for Ecosystems Science and Society at Northern Arizona University. There, he used stable isotope probing to explore the activity and growth of individual bacterial populations within their natural soil environment.

At PNNL, Bram is working on the Microbiome Science Team with Kirsten Hofmockel. His work will measure the distribution of key traits related to carbon use efficiency across the bacterial tree of life. His work continues to develop the potential for stable isotopes, particularly heavy oxygen, to quantify the complex expression of bacterial traits in natural settings. He plans to utilize the cutting-edge technologies at PNNL to link microbial activity with soil carbon formation and decomposition.

Andy Lin earned his PhD from the Department of Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. His doctoral research, under Bill Noble, focused on developing computational methods for analyzing liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry-based proteomics data. Prior to his PhD, he received his BS in bioinformatics and cell molecular biology from the University of Michigan.

Andy currently works in the Chemical and Biological Signatures group, under the mentorship of Karen Wahl, in the National Security Directorate. His work at PNNL focuses on using proteomics data to understand how bacterial protein samples naturally degrade over time. Using this information, he plans on developing a predictive model for estimating the length of time a bacterial sample has been degrading.

Darian Smercina earned her PhD in crop and soil sciences from Michigan State University under the mentorship of Lisa Tiemann. Her doctoral research focused on understanding the complex biological and environmental controls on free-living nitrogen fixation in soil systems, a vital biogeochemical process. Darian also has a BS in biology from the University of Toledo.

Under the mentorship of Kirsten Hofmockel, Darian has joined the microbiome science team in the Earth and Biological Sciences Directorate. She will continue to pursue soil microbial ecology and biogeochemistry-relevant questions, using novel microfluidic systems and biological nitrogen fixation as a model process to address questions about microbial-scale processes and microbial interactions. Her work will contribute broadly to our understanding of environmental microbiology and aims to improve our predictive capacity of soil microbial communities as they relate to global biogeochemical cycles.

Neerja Zambare earned her PhD in chemical engineering from Montana State University, conducting research in the Bioprocess Laboratory at the Center for Biofilm Engineering. Under the mentorship of Robin Gerlach and Ellen Lauchnor, her graduate work focused on reactive transport during microbially induced calcium carbonate precipitation (MICP) and the applications of MICP in environmental remediation such as well-fracture sealing by biomineralization and heavy metal contaminant sequestration by co-precipitation. Her work also explored biomineralization at the single-cell level using droplet-based microfluidics paired with optical and chemical imaging techniques.

At PNNL, Neerja is expanding on her microscale biomineralization work in the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory under the guidance of Alice Dohnalkova. Neerja plans on studying the underlying cellular-level and biofilm-level processes that support biomineralization through correlative microscopic and microanalytic techniques. She is particularly interested in determining the function of microbes during nucleation of biological precipitates and in developing engineered microenvironments using organics to control the precipitation process.

Jayde Aufrecht earned her PhD from the University of Tennessee's Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. She conducted her doctoral research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory under the mentorship of Scott Retterer. This work focused on using microfabrication processes to create synthetic habitats for plants and microorganisms to enable dynamic imaging of rhizosphere interactions.

In the Environmental Molecular Sciences Division under the mentorship of Jim Moran, Jayde is continuing to build synthetic micro-habitats and uses a systems biology approach to understand microbial interactions in the soil. She plans to work with chemical imaging experts at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory to develop a platform for dynamic spatial sampling of metabolite exchanges between organisms. Her research will contribute to our knowledge of terrestrial carbon cycling and could lead to improved sustainable agriculture methods.

Mavis Boamah received her PhD in chemistry from Northwestern University under the mentorship of Professor Franz M. Geiger after obtaining a BA degree from Wellesley College with majors in chemistry and mathematics. Her graduate school research focused on understanding reactions occurring at the charged mineral oxide/water interface using nonlinear optics, improving environmental remediation techniques, investigating the nanostructure of metallic films with atom probe tomography, and employing nanodevices to generate renewable energy.

At PNNL, her mentors are Kevin Rosso and Zheming Wang. She is a member of the Geochemistry group in the Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate. Here, Mavis is developing a molecularly resolved structural model of an electrical double layer at a ubiquitous and essential metal oxide/aqueous solution interface to improve fundamental understanding of how this structure controls interfacial electron transfer processes that lie at the heart of many environmental chemistry challenges and new energy device problems. She aims to overcome knowledge-limiting obstacles by capitalizing on her unique experience and PNNL's world-class capabilities in nonlinear optical spectroscopies and supporting theory and computation tools.