Cynthia S. Gong
Research Scientist
Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
4505 Maryland Parkway, Box 454009
Las Vegas, NV 89154-4009
e-mail: gongc@unlv.nevada.edu
phone: (702)
Education
University of California, Berkeley - PhD, Chemistry, 2004
Metabolic Engineering of Radioresistant Deinococcus radiodurans for Bioprecipitation of Actinides.
Committee Chair: Darleane Hoffmann, Professor of Chemistry, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Coadvisors: Jay D. Keasling, Professor of Chemical Engineering, UC Berkeley, Division Director, Synthetic Biology Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Heino Nitsche, Professor of Chemistry, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA – B.S., Chemistry, 1999
Research Experience
My research focuses on alleviating the environmental impact of nuclear power; namely “greening” the fuel cycle. As a postdoc, I have extensively studied the proliferation-resistant fuel recycling scheme proposed for use in the United States. I have published the first comprehensive characterization of the uranium adduct involved, and performed the basic research on the extraction behavior of this adduct. In collaboration with the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, I have recently developed an aqueous reductive nitrosylation of pertechnetate, only the second reported and the first since 1972. I am currently working on elucidating the aqueous speciation of the uranium complexes formed during reprocessing and the migration behavior of actinide colloids in the environment. This builds on my graduate work, where I concentrated on evaluating the viability of using natural and engineered bacterial systems to create low-energy bioremediation approaches to fuel recycling and in situ biobarriers to the spread of highly toxic and long-lived radioactive actinides through the environment.
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