The beginning of any new career can be challenging to navigate, let alone the transition from a graduate research assistant to a (semi) independent scientist. For me, this occurred rather abruptly upon accepting a Linus Pauling post-doctoral fellowship at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). In short, the Pauling fellowship provides resources and three years of financial support to cultivate a research program with the expectation that you will serve as a principal investigator, project manager, researcher and mentor. My research broadly encompasses the synthesis and crystallographic/spectroscopic characterization of novel 4- and 5f element containing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) for use in visible and UV-light mediated processes. For example, we are exploring the use of lanthanide (Ln) containing MOFs for aqueous actinide sequestration and detection, which is of practical and fundamental interest in monitoring (for instance) environmental migration at legacy nuclear weapons production sites. Accordingly, a family of SmIII, TbIII and EuIII containing frameworks have been prepared and each demonstrate high affinity for the capture of aqueous actinide species, e.g. UO22+ and NpO22+. The adsorption of the uranyl cation into these materials is detectable colorimetrically, i.e. the material changes color from tan to yellow upon capture, and also by luminescence spectroscopy. Presented here will be an overview of our efforts to utilize MOFs for the capture and detection of actinides as well as an overview of my experiences as a Linus Pauling fellow at PNNL.

Experiences as an early career scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Macromolecular Chemistry: The Second Century

[Author Benefits](https://scimeetings.acs.org/?utm_source=pubs_content_marketing&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=0320_MCF_NPI_Launch_Spring_Homepage&ref=pubs_content_marketing)

[How to use SciMeetings](https://storage.googleapis.com/dl.morressier.com/acs/SciMeetings-ACSSpring2020-HowToGuide_M3020-Final.pdf)

[Frequently Asked Questions](https://storage.googleapis.com/dl.morressier.com/acs/SciMtng_ACSNMSp2020_FAQ_M3120_Final.pdf)

ACS Spring 2020 National Meeting & Expo

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.