Principal Investigator
Sarah Finkeldei
Sarah received her Diploma in Chemistry from the RWTH Aachen University, Germany. She conducted her research on pyrochlore oxides as potential nuclear waste forms within the Nuclear Waste Management Institute at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany under the supervision of professor Dirk Bosbach. She received her PhD from the RWTH Aachen University in 2014. During her time as a postdoctoral researcher in the Forschungszentrum Juelich she was awarded a two-year grant to strengthen the international collaborations of the Forschungszentrum Juelich on spent nuclear fuel research with Professor Rodney Ewing (Stanford University) and Professor Maik Lang (University of Tennessee Knoxville).
In order to gain more experience in the field of nuclear fuel fabrication she joined the Nuclear Fuel Materials Group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher in the summer of 2017. Her work contributed to the Advanced Fuels Campaign of the Department of Energy under the supervision of Kurt Terrani and Andrew Nelson. In July 2019 Sarah joined the Chemistry Department at the University of California, Irvine where she is currently building up a radiochemistry laboratory dedicated to materials chemistry in the nuclear context. Her research interests span from advanced fuel forms to nuclear waste forms.
Sarah has received several awards for her work including the Excellence Award of the Forschungszentrum Juelich and the PhD award of the German Chemical Society, Nuclear Chemistry Division for her PhD thesis.
Graduate Students
Steven Nguyen
B.Sc. University of California, Riverside, 2021
Steven graduated with high honors from the University of California, Riverside in 2021 with a B.Sc in Chemistry. Now in the Finkeldei Group, he studies the redox chemistry of uranium dioxide with stainless steel and Zircaloy-4. Legend has it he also has a drawer full of granola bars, but this has not been confirmed. When not in the lab making the rest of us jealous of his SEM images and flexing his uncanny knowledge as our resident mineralogy expert, Steven spends his time archiving various media, taking up new hobbies like woodworking, learning the piano, chilling in the backseat of our carpools, and being a victim of Audrey's very encouraging belaying at the ARC Climbing Wall. He's most famous for sneaking into the Democratic National Convention after giving a conference presentation in Chicago. His only comment - "I saw food. And I was hungry."
Audrey Miles
B.S. University of Notre Dame, 2023
MPhil. University of Cambridge, 2024
Audrey graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2023 with a B.S. in Chemistry with Computing. At Notre Dame, she performed first-principles quantum chemistry calculations for catalytic systems with Prof. Bill Schneider. She later joined Prof. Amy Hixon's research group, where she studied the chemistry of uranyl peroxide nanoclusters. She then skipped across the pond to the University of Cambridge for a Master's in Nuclear Energy. Audrey now spends her time trying to convince the rest of the group that her atomistic simulations are cool, which involves developing machine learning potentials for advanced fuel systems. When she isn't coding at her desk, she's probably knitting, cycling around SoCal, or planning a camping trip.
Undergraduate Students
Andrew Cho
UCI, Materials Science & Engineering
Audrey Nguyen
UCI, Chemistry
Haroshun McDermott
UCI, Chemical Engineering
Research Staff
Claudia Dewi
Junior Specialist
B.S. University of California, Irvine, 2025
Claudia joined the Finkeldei Lab as a junior specialist after graduating with her undergraduate degree in chemistry from UCI in 2025! She has already made waves in the lab with her very artistic contributions to our seasonal office decorations and was crowned the winner of our pumpkin carving contest. Beyond putting everyone else's pumpkin carving to shame, Claudia is working on nuclear data for medical isotope production.
Group Alumni
Dr. Jessica Granger-Jones
PhD Student
Janae Burks
Research Assisant
Max Zhang
Undergraduate Student
Hasan Jebory
Junior Specialist
Linus Pauling Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Master of Business & Science (MBS) Student in Personal Care Science at Rutgers University
Nuclear Engineering PhD Student at Pennsylvania State University
Master's Student at Imperial College London
Anatoliy Turkin
Staff Scientist
Oran Lori
Postdoctoral Scholar
John Proctor
Master's Student
Materials Scientist at Eurofins PSS Insourcing Solutions
Jacqueline Ferrer
Undergraduate Student & Post-Bac
Post-Bac Researcher at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Kaneen Muldrow
Undergraduate Student
Nuclear Equipment Operator at Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant
Jack Shire
Undergraduate Student
Nuclear Engineering Graduate Student at Oregon State University
Dídac Gomez i Castellvi
Master's Student
Field Service Engineer III at ThermoFisher Scientific Barcelona
Colin Brown
Undergraduate Student
Materials, Process, and Physics Engineer at Boeing
Timothy Connor
Master's Student
Staff Environmental Chemist at Brown and Caldwell
Lauren O'Brien
Undergraduate Student
R&D Engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lucas Opitz
Research Assistant
Nuclear Consultant at Safetec GmbH