Alexander Iveson

Alexander shares the impact his A-level geology class had on his career path.

In your current position, what are your main responsibilities?

My current role as a research scientist in the Environmental Signatures team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (WA, USA) draws on my background and skills in mass spectrometry and high-temperature geochemistry. I am working on a variety of large multi-disciplinary projects related to nuclear forensics, nuclear non-proliferation, energy security, and analytical geochemistry method development.

My day-to-day responsibilities involve running and maintaining mass spectrometry instruments (QQQ/MC/SF-ICP-MS), developing new techniques for sample processing and analysis, interpreting and reporting geochemical data, and writing project proposals and final reports to funding partners.

Did you get into this role right after graduation?

After graduating with my BSc from Edinburgh, I worked for a mining company in northwestern Greenland for 3 months from July - October 2012, undertaking banded iron deposit exploration in polar bear territory of the Arctic Circle. Following this position, I began applying for PhD projects in the UK and internationally. My undergraduate supervisor from Edinburgh forwarded me details of a PhD project being offered at Washington State University in Pullman, WA, USA, having worked on the Columbia River basalt flows in that area himself. My application was successful, and I began my PhD at WSU in January of 2013.

I lived in the Pacific Northwest for four and a half years and graduated in March 2017. I spent the summers of my PhD working in Manhattan in the Earth and Planetary Sciences department at the American Museum of Natural History, NY, and also doing fieldwork on Mt. St. Helens volcano.

After this, I returned to the UK to take up a NERC post-doctoral research position at Durham University. I was at Durham from June 2017 - April 2023, with an interim six-month post-doctoral position at Oxford University from June - December 2019. From January 2020 to April 2023, I was funded by my successful application to The Leverhulme Trust for an independent Early Career Fellowship.

While living in WA for the first time, I met my fiancée, and having been together in the UK for six years, we decided to move back to the US. My fiancée's background is hydrogeology and mine is geochemistry, and we were lucky that two positions were advertised at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in our relevant fields. We have both now been back in WA since mid-2023, working as part of the Earth Systems Science division at PNNL.

What part of your role do you find the most satisfying?

My position allows me to work on a huge diversity of problems related to human–Earth interactions (e.g., climate change, water sustainability, nuclear materials, and threat analysis), and ultimately contribute to strengthening US and global security. Even though my academic/research background was focused on volcanoes and ore deposits, joining PNNL has challenged me to adapt and apply my transferable skills to other non-geology areas.

Further, while I often use the same analytical techniques for different projects, the scientific community is constantly publishing new insights and improvements and is pushing the capabilities of modern instrumentation. This process of continual innovation means there are always new areas to explore that were previously inaccessible.

What part of your role do you find the most challenging?

In the UK, we do not really have any positions that are equivalent to those at US National Laboratories. They are best thought of as a hybrid sector with aspects of both pure academic research and more applied industrial outcomes; and funding success is heavily based on time-sensitive project deliverables that impact real-world scenarios (e.g., tracing nefarious nuclear activities). Coming from a career in academia where you are often involved with every stage of research, it can be difficult to adjust to this dynamic, especially when you are often only a small part of a much larger project.

Furthermore, while it is a salaried position, we do have a timecard system and each 30-minute increment of your workday must be accounted for and charged to a specific project, so you must have quite a strict responsibility for your own time.

Additionally, being a non-US national also limits some of the projects that I am currently able to work on, due to security clearance requirements. I am hoping to eventually gain US citizenship after my fiancée and I get married, which should open up further opportunities for my career development in this role.

Do you have any advice for students looking for a career in your field?

I feel is it important for me to acknowledge that my career path so far has also been influenced and facilitated by the network of Earth scientists I have encountered and learned from, starting all the way back in my first A-level Geology class. I have been lucky to have had supervisors and mentors at every stage of my academic development who were willing to share with me useful and relevant experience and advice.

My research has taken me to labs all over America, and from the Egyptian desert to the volcanic mountains of the Cascades. I chose to accept the exploration job in Greenland, and then my PhD position in WA, even though I had not planned for these opportunities, and knew it would be hard to move away from family and friends for an extended period.

There will always be challenges and disappointing project outcomes in any field of academia or industry. However, I have always tried to learn from those experiences and apply the knowledge I gained to improve my skill set and approach to future work.

Why did you choose The University of Edinburgh and what did you discover while studying here?

My 6th Form offered Geology as an A-level subject, and my teacher there obtained his PhD in Geophysics from Edinburgh. When I informed him that I wanted to continue and do Geology at university, he spoke very highly of it, and after I visited the university on an open day I was sold!

I worked in the Teviot bars (and over the summer for several Fringe festivals) throughout my whole undergraduate, as well as playing for the university squash team. I loved the sense of community I felt from both my degree peers and my EUSA bar/squash club teammates. I am even still in contact with lots of the friends I made during my time as an undergraduate, including people I met on the first night of Fresher's Week!

What was the highlight of your studies?

The multiple field trips that form a large part of the geology degree were one of the highlights of my time at Edinburgh, as they allow the students to socialise and learn together in a much more dynamic environment than just labs and lecture halls.

Do you have any advice for current students?

Try not to accumulate so many rock samples and so much office equipment because you never know how many times you will have to relocate across the Atlantic! (I have now done it three times and had to significantly downsize my collection each time...).