Nic Cicchetti
Nic received his Ph.D. in radiochemistry from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where his research centered on the redox chemistry of neptunium. For his thesis, Nic developed microfluidic and electrochemical platforms for controlling neptunium redox and speciation, with a focus on developing tools to combine multiple simultaneous techniques including electrochemistry, spectrophotometry, and microfluidic separations. Before graduate school, Nic received his bachelor’s in chemical engineering from Tufts University, and worked as a materials engineer at Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc., where he helped to develop lanthanide-based transparent ceramics for radiation detection and imaging.
Towards his doctorate, Nic conducted research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory designing and testing electrochemical microreactors for the redox control of neptunium in microfluidic separations of nuclear debris. Nic also interned at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he used synchrotron x-ray microscopy to characterize oxidation layers on uranium dioxide for nuclear forensics.
As a Hoffman Fellow in the NextGen program, Nic is developing an independent research project, with an interest in functionalizing electrodes to make highly selective and sensitive measurements of actinides in dilute environmental samples, and the development of in-operando x-ray absorption spectroscopy techniques for measuring electrochemical reactions of actinides.
Through the NextGen Fellowship, he hopes to continue contributing to impactful advancements in actinide electrochemistry and x-ray spectroscopy, furthering their applications towards the broader nonproliferation mission.
