Katherine Thornock Luebke (Chemistry and Biochemistry) won an award for best poster presentation at the annual Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D) University Program Review (UPR) meeting in June. Luebke's poster detailed her work on electrochemical recovery of uranium from uranium hexafluoride, the compound used in the uranium enrichment process to produce fuel for nuclear weapons. Her work was performed in collaboration with her mentor, Robert Rundberg, from Los Alamos National Laboratory, and supports advances in the separation, recovery, and utilization of uranium. She is a Nuclear Science and Security Consortium (NSSC) Graduate Fellow in the radiochemistry program at UNLV. The meeting included more than 285 students, faculty, national laboratory scientists, and DOE NNSA program officials. The NSSC student fellows presented 18 oral presentations and 30 poster presentations. Three types of awards were presented to the students: awards for best national laboratory collaboration, best poster presentation, and best oral presentation.
