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DOE Pulse
  • Number 449  |
  • October 5, 2015

Garcia-Diaz expands research horizons at Savannah River

Dr. Brenda Garcia-Diaz of DOE's Savannah River National Laboratory

Dr. Brenda Garcia-Diaz of DOE's Savannah
River National Laboratory.

For Dr. Brenda Garcia-Diaz of DOE's Savannah River National Laboratory, job satisfaction and collaboration have gone hand in hand, and have led to official recognition within her adopted home state.

“The best part of the job has been working with people,” she says. “I’m impressed with the depth of knowledge that is in SRNL, and I have seen over and over how we can target very difficult problems by getting the right people together and forming effective teams.

“It’s been great to see and work with people with different backgrounds who can open your mind … To address the challenges we face today, it requires teams with deep backgrounds in a variety of skill sets. I have been lucky to have several opportunities where teams started with nothing and created something great by combining different knowledge and experiences.”

Earlier in 2015, Garcia-Diaz was honored by the South Carolina Governor’s Office as the recipient of the 2015 Young Researcher Award for Excellence in Scientific Research.

She was initially attracted to SRNL to work on hydrogen storage material projects; since arriving (in 2007), her wide-ranging assignments have also included modeling and experimentation for safe storage and closure of high level waste tanks; materials research for alternate and renewable energy; accident tolerant nuclear fuel research and other materials-related activities.

Most notably, she has served as a lead investigator on an SRNL-led team (working with the Universities of South Carolina and Alabama) that won a three-year research grant through DOE’s SunShot Initiative, the national effort to make solar energy more cost-competitive. The project is identifying how new, corrosion-resistant materials and strategies can contribute to a higher efficiency solar energy carrier system.

She is also involved in research activities that are consistent with SRNL’s role as the National Lab for DOE’s environmental management program.

“Recently, I have been working a lot in looking for solutions with high temperature, molten salt electrochemistry to deal with legacy nuclear materials,” she said. “I think it can impact the way we treat waste, not only on the Savannah River Site, but in the DOE complex and worldwide. One example of this is that we have developed an electrochemical method to remove stainless steel cladding from nuclear fuels in molten salt electrolytes. Removal of this cladding in aqueous solutions has been one of the main problems preventing disposition of some legacy nuclear fuels stored at SRS. We have also been discussing how these methods could be merged with other electrochemical techniques such as molten chloride pyroprocessing that has been developed at ARNL and INL to create integrated methods to remove the cladding and process the nuclear materials for disposal.”

In his official letter of nomination for the Governor’s Office award, SRNL Director Dr. Terry Michalske referred to García-Díaz as “an exceptionally strong research engineer with high-impact accomplishments.”

“Within her short seven years at Savannah River National Laboratory, she has made a strong impression on other researchers and the SRNL management team through the breadth and technical quality of her work, earning the respect as a team lead from both our junior staff and senior technical staff,” said Michalske. “Her engaging and gregarious personality brings excitement to our research staff. She has a record that proves her to be an effective technical researcher and manager, and an emergent leader in our laboratory.”

In addition to her research activities, García-Díaz has taken an active role in mentoring and counseling high school and college students who are interested in science and math. She currently serves on the external advisory boards for the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of South Carolina and has served as the local chapter president for ASM International, the professional society for materials engineers.

Dr. García-Díaz joined SRNL after receiving a doctorate in chemical engineering from the University of South Carolina. Prior to moving to South Carolina, she received both her B.S. and M.S. degrees from the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez.

Submitted by DOE's Savannah River National Laboratory