Life Update:

Officially converted to staff scientist halfway through my postdoc ✨

Celebrated by presenting on nuclear data measurements in high energy density plasmas at NIF in no better place than Hawaii 🌸

So thankful for a boss who understands that I need a minimum 2 hours of dilly dally-ing before I’ll show up to work.

Silly of me to think I could move away from Colorado & not miss it 🥺

The “premortem” meeting for our NIF shot has the doom-like aura that meshes with who I am as a human.

+1 PhD for radiochemistry 🎉

@rsudowe.bsky.social

The unfamiliarity I face with my own words when opening manuscript I wrote months ago to edit post-review.

Do I actually have to wear pants to work everyday? Is this not lab safe attire?

The decor of a nuclear chemist ☢️

My job is simple, really:

I introduce impurities into my pure radionuclide solutions to figure out new ways to purify my radionuclide solutions.

4 flights the past 2 weeks & 4 more this month - I am NOT cut out for travel. I’m tired. I have no routine. Switching from travel back to lab work has a huge activation barrier. How do you do it? What are the secrets?

I returned to my undergrad to give a seminar on using fusion to support astrophysics & stockpile stewardship today. Not only was it my first seminar that was a full house, but chemistry, physics, political science, and anthro students came… the day before thanksgiving break!!

Worst part of going to a physics meeting where 75% of people are all older white men from the same generation is that everyone is named Mark, Dave, or Steve.

Wait maybe I did miss New Mexico

The “for our children and our children’s children” dedication at the end of Fern Gully hits different as an adult 😭

Time for a re-introductory post!

I’m Samantha & I’m a radiochemist. I first found community on 🐦 in 2015 as an UG doing organic synthesis for used nuclear fuel separations. Now I’m developing chem to dope radionuclides into capsules & studying nuclear rxns using the world’s biggest laser system ☢️

A NIF target assembly would be so sick for a seminar show & tell but I fear TSA would snatch that right up

Sam has a PhD and an ulu, the most versatile multitool the north has ever made. There is nothing she can’t do.

Ya close your eyes for 6 months to finish your PhD & lose all of your Chem🐦 friends :(

So happy I found everyone again 🥹

Testing, testing… 1, 2, 3 ☺️