Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) staff scientist Gauthier Deblonde has been named a 2024 "Rising Star" by the American Chemical Society for his work in environmental science.
Deblonde's research as well as this year's cohort of winners will be featured in a special issue of the American Chemical Society journal ACS Environmental Au. Deblonde's research also has been selected for the front cover of the journal's current issue.
As a staff scientist in LLNL's Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division in the Physical and Life Sciences Directorate, Deblonde's work focuses on developing new techniques to decipher the chemistry of radioactive elements.
Deblonde has always been fascinated by "difficult-to-study" materials. So, he naturally turned to nuclear sciences, and particularly the chemistry of heavy elements and "actinides" (a family of 15 radioactive elements, which includes uranium and plutonium).
Most of these elements only exist in trace amounts in nature or need to be produced in nuclear reactors and, as a result, we know very little about their chemical properties - relative to other non-radioactive materials. Deblonde's research focuses on developing new strategies to probe the chemistry of these rare, toxic and elusive chemical elements.
"Most people fear radioactive materials, but a lot of this is irrational and not based on facts," he said. "That's why it is important to study such materials - from fundamental research to applied sciences- so that we better understand their interactions with the environment, prevent potential hazards and still take full advantage of their truly unique properties for national security and civilian applications."
Current studies in his lab focus on the interactions between metal ions and chelators (natural small molecules, polyoxometalates, synthetic ligands or macromolecules, like proteins). Such studies have broad implications, ranging from separation technologies and medical applications to nuclear sciences, strategic metal mining and the environmental behavior of heavy metals.
In Deblonde's featured article, he looks at the chemical interactions of actinides with the biosphere and geochemical environment, i.e., their "biogeochemistry." In his critical review, Deblonde dives into the past discoveries and recent advances in the field of actinide biogeochemistry with a particular emphasis on actinides other than thorium and uranium (i.e., actinium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, curium, berkelium and californium) as they originate from anthropogenic activities and can be mobile in the environment. This field of research is critical to understand the chemistry of nuclear waste and the potential interactions between humans and radioactive materials.
To date, Deblonde has co-authored more than 60 peer reviewed publications, has been granted seven patents and frequently serves as a reviewer for funding agencies and journals to support the chemistry community. In 2023, he was awarded a prestigious "Early Career Award" by the US Department of Energy for his research on actinide polyoxometalates.
Deblonde's academic journey began at the École Nationale Supérieure de Chimie de Paris (Chimie ParisTech), where he earned a chemical engineering degree with a double major in nuclear fuel chemistry, in 2012. He then pursued a Ph.D. in physical and analytical chemistry at Pierre & Marie Curie University (UPMC), completing it in 2015. In 2016, he moved to California for a postdoctoral position at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He then joined LLNL's Nuclear and Chemical Sciences division as a postdoctoral scientist in 2019 and became a permanent staff member a year later.
Deblonde has mentored numerous students from universities worldwide and is a strong advocate for LLNL's Glenn Seaborg Institute. The institute's mission is to serve as a national center for the education and training of undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs and faculty in actinide sciences.
