Bio
Knoxville native Sawyer Irvine joined ORNL in 2022 as a radioisotope production technical professional in the Radiochemical Engineering and Development Center on the actinium-225 project.
In his current position supporting Ac-225 production, works with Quality Assurance to validate procedures by coordinating projects and ensuring proper chemical practice is followed; coordinates sampling plans for the project; develops training and writing sampling plans; supports the group leader with additional projects to improve the process and production pathways; works to implement quality controls on equipment to decrease variance and increase worker consistency; and collaborates with RSTD to support research efforts working to improve the Ac-225 production program, increasing its validity and reproducibility. He is currently working on NIR spectroscopy methods for Ac-225 production in a hot cell.
Irvine attended Pellissippi State Community College while still in high school and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry and physics from Brigham Young University-Idaho. He holds a Master of Science degree in nuclear engineering from the University of Tennessee.
As a graduate student, Irvine developed methodology to determine fundamental properties of lanthanides to enable calibration free spectroscopy for radioisotope research and production. This involved using Python for data analysis.