Keynote talk title: Accelerator Mass Spectrometry: Enabling measurements of ultra-trace radionuclides for applications in Earth and Space Sciences
Michaela Froehlich has obtained her PhD in chemistry from the University of Vienna in Austria (2011) and has significant experience in radiochemistry. In 2012, she moved to Australia to accept a Postdoctoral Position at the Australian National University where she continued combining innovative chemistry and the ultrasensitive atom counting method called Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) that uses state-of-the-art particle accelerators. Michaela’s measurements demonstrated for the first time that Uranium-236 (236U) is detectable in the environment (concentrations of femtogram/gram). Her work has opened up a vast suite of applications including the use of 236U as an environmental tracer for ocean transport pathways, for studies of soil and sediment movements, sediment deposition in marine environments, uranium exploration, and biological uptake (vegetation and higher mammals). Michaela is also part of the Advanced Metrology Team at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics where she develops chemical separation techniques to extract radioimpurities such as lead-210 (210Pb) and optimises the AMS measurements to characterise and quantify their background in high-purity detector material.
In 2019, she was awarded the Trevor Ophel Innovation Award and in 2023, the Environmental Chemistry Medal Award by the Royal Australian Chemical Institute in recognition of her work dedicated to developing methods for trace level actinide radionuclides used as environmental tracers. She serves as Associate Editor for the “Journal of Environmental Radioactivity” (2023) and is the Vice-President of the South Pacific Environmental Radioactivity Association (2024).
