HOFFMAN FELLOWS

Appie attended the University of Missouri – Kansas City on full academic scholarship where she received her B.S. in Chemistry and B.F.A. in Dance Performance. Her undergraduate research with Prof. Xiaobo Chen focused on synthesizing nanomaterials to study photocatalytic hydrogen generation. Appie danced professionally with local Kansas City companies, and later with the San Diego Ballet. She completed her Ph.D. in Dec. 2021 at Washington University in St. Louis in the lab of Prof. Bill Tolman, funded through the NSF-CCI Center for Sustainable Polymers, which focused on mechanistic studies of Aluminum catalysts in stereoselective ring-opening polymerizations. She joined the Glenn T. Seaborg Center under the co-advisement of Dr. Stefan Minasian and Prof. Rebecca Abergel at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher in 2022, focusing on the preparation of actinide dioxides from molecular precursors as well as transuranic separations and purifications. She is excited to join the NextGen Program as a Darleane C. Hoffman Postdoctoral Fellow under the guidance of Prof. Rebecca Abergel and develop materials with precise spectroscopic signatures towards the efforts of nuclear forensics and nonproliferation.

Olivia received her B.S. in chemistry from Brandeis University in 2016 where she performed undergraduate research under Dr. Casey Wade (OSU) on the design and synthesis of pyrazolate-based metal organic frameworks. She completed her Ph.D. with Prof. Oleg V. Ozerov at Texas A&M University where she studied the chemistry of highly Lewis acidic cations coupled with halogenated carborane anions for hydrodefluorination. As a postdoc, she worked with Dr. Stefan Minasian using soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and microscopy to understand metal-ligand interactions in f-element organometallics with C K-edge XAS. She is currently working under the advice of David K. Shuh as a Hoffman Postdoctoral Fellow using radiochemical synthesis and X-ray spectromicroscopy techniques to characterize and better understand the reactivity of material signatures in the environment.

Ryan completed his B. A. in Physics and in Applied Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. As an undergraduate, he conducted research on transition edge sensors for detection of neutrinoless double beta decay with the experiment CUPID. During his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley, he studied the direct detection of dark matter using noble gases. His work with the LZ experiment, a dual-phase xenon time projection chamber, helped to establish unprecedented dark matter sensitivity. He also investigated superfluid helium as a detection medium for low mass dark matter. In 2021, Ryan became a fellow of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, which supported the remainder of his Ph.D. With this support, Ryan built a prototype neutron detector based on scintillation of pressurized helium gas with silicon photomultiplier read-out. Ryan looks forward to researching spin systems for quantum sensing with Prof. Ashok Ajoy as a Hoffman Postdoctoral Fellow.

Veronica C. Bradley earned a PhD in Radiochemistry from the University of Missouri (2022) working under Dr. John Brockman, where she focused on rapid analysis techniques for nuclear forensics applications. She completed a postdoctoral appointment at Oak Ridge National Lab where she focused on novel sampling systems for ICP-MS analysis.

Frances completed her B.S. in Chemistry and B.A. in English at Florida International University in 2019. During her undergraduate tenure, she received two fellowships, the Department of Energy Environmental Management (DOE-EM) fellowship and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Fellowship.  As a dual fellow, her undergraduate research under Dr. Hilary Emerson focused on laboratory experiments to update risk assessment models on the behavior of the actinide series elements under high ionic strength conditions relevant to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. Afterwards, she went on to University of Notre Dame to pursue a PhD in both Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences (CEEES) and Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) departments as a Nuclear Energy University Program Fellow (NEUP) in 2020. Her graduate research under Dr. Amy Hixon focused on the environmental chemistry of plutonium, where she studied the sorption processes of plutonium on iron oxide mineral nanoparticles as a function of crystallite size. After completing her PhD in 2024, she started her postdoctoral studies in the Darleane C. Hoffman Postdoctoral Fellowship program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Currently, she is working under Dr. Jennifer Wacker and Dr. Vassilia Zorba in developing preconcentration techniques to improve actinide detection sensitivity as well as obtaining molecular spectroscopic signatures of protactinium for nonproliferation applications.

Max received his B.A. in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania in 2018. As an undergraduate, he conducted research on high energy calibration for atmospheric neutrino searches with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory under Dr. Joshua Klein. He completed his Ph.D. in Physics at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with Dr. Gabriel Orebi Gann on current and next-generation optical light-based neutrino detection, with a focus on applications for MeV-scale energies. His thesis topic covered the measurement of the Boron-8 solar neutrino flux with the liquid scintillator detector SNO+, the successor to the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Additionally, his work explored research and development for the scintillator-Cherenkov hybrid optical detection regime, including assessment of physics potential and impact for solar neutrino searches in large-scale hybrid detectors and the first exploration of alpha/beta particle identification in the novel scintillating medium water-based liquid scintillator. Max's work as a Hoffman Postdoctoral Fellow at Berkeley Lab will focus on high-rate HPGe detector design, characterization and testing for space applications with Dr. Ren Cooper.

Joe earned his B.A. in biological chemistry from Dartmouth College under the mentorship of Professor Ekaterina Pletneva, with whom he studied electron transfer proteins. He completed his Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, in the laboratory of Professor John Arnold. At Berkeley, Joe investigated the bonding and reactivity of complexes bearing uranium-silicon and -germanium bonds, as well as the interactions of uranium with small molecules. Now advised by Professor Rebecca Abergel as a Hoffman Postdoctoral Fellow, Joe aims to develop signatures and protocols to safeguard materials relevant to advanced reactor fuel cycles.

Santiago completed his PhD in computational chemistry with Anastassia Alexandrova at UCLA. His work there focused on quantum-informed geometric learning and the implementation of algorithms for high-dimensional, dynamic studies of electrostatic preorganization in protein active sites. As a DOE Computational Sciences Graduate Fellow, Santiago also had the opportunity to work with Sam Blau and Kristin Persson on machine learning algorithms for reaction property prediction. Prior to his graduate studies, Santiago attended Harvard College where he earned a degree in Chemistry and Physics while working with Alan Aspuru-Guzik.  As a Darleane C. Hoffman Postdoctoral Fellow, he is working with Sam Blau to develop machine-learned interatomic potentials (MLIPs) for F-Block chemical simulations.