Juliane Weber
ORNL is proud of its role in fostering the next generation of scientists and engineers. We bring in talented young researchers, team them with accomplished scientists and engineers, and put them to work at the lab’s one-of-a-kind facilities. The result is research that makes us proud and prepares them for distinguished careers.
We asked some of these young researchers why they chose a career in science, what they are working on at ORNL, and where they would like to go with their careers.
Juliane Weber
Postdoc, Chemical Sciences Division
Ph.D., Geosciences, RWTH Aachen University, Germany
Hometown: Bonn, Germany
What are you working on at ORNL?
I am a geochemist, and I focus on understanding the fate of harmful materials such as heavy metals or radionuclides at the environmentally relevant mineral-water interface over different length scales. For this, I combined experimental wet-chemistry with different high-resolution chemical imaging characterization techniques such as atom probe tomography.
What would you like to do in your career?
I would like to build a research program to investigate what controls mineral reactivity and then understand how we can use this knowledge to immobilize harmful elements, e.g., radionuclides or heavy metals, and, as a consequence, make energy production more efficient and environmentally friendly.
Why did you choose a career in science?
I like to be challenged intellectually every day—which is guaranteed when working in science. In addition, I love to contribute my part to humankind’s effort to understand the underlying principles of how things work in nature and how we can make use of these principles in our everyday lives.