My past research at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, CA, USA (Oct. 96-May 98) involved the application of infrared spectroscopy with fiber optics sampling to characterize the waste at Hanford site reservation in Washington State, USA. The radioactive waste consists of complex mixtures of sludges, saltcakes, slurries, and supernates that are stored in 177 underground tanks. The tanks includes 60 million gallons of radioactive mixed waste that needs to be disposed in a safe, cost-effective, and environmentally sound manner. In order to determine the waste composition I applied a variety of spectroscopy techniques like near-IR (NIR)Absorption, Reflection, and Attenuated Total Reflection Spectroscopy, to surrogate samples with similar inorganic and organic compositions as the actual waste. Furthermore, we used multivariate data analysis, primarily Partial Least Squares, to analyze the spectroscopic complex data. As a result of this project I have published two related articles in Applied Spectroscopy where I was the first author. My work won the Best Poster in NIR in the Eastern Analytical Conference in New Jersey on November 1997.

I have graduated in Chemistry with M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (1991-1996). My research area was in spectroscopy and chemometrics. Specifically we developed a Fourier Transform Infrared spectrometer capable of determining ppb (parts-per-billion) contents of water in semiconductor corrosive gases that are used during the production of microelectronics materials. The project was founded by SEMATECH and by Sandia National Laboratories.

I got my bachelor degree in Chemistry from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru,Lima-PERU, Then, my wife and I were accepted to start a graduate degree in USA. We both majored in Analytical Chemistry with Professor Thomas Niemczyk.