Chemist reflects on his experience as a scholar with the DOE
Meet Matt Comins
While studying for his doctoral degree at the University of Notre Dame, Matt Comins, Ph.D., was eager to collaborate with experts in the field of actinide chemistry with experience related to deep geologic repositories, the subject of his dissertation. He found the perfect opportunity to do just that as a participant in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Scholars Program with the Actinide Chemistry and Repository Science Program (ACRSP) team. An extension of Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), ACRSP is focused on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), a deep geologic repository for the permanent disposal of defense-related transuranic waste in Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Matt Comins, Ph.D., turned his aspirations to collaborate with the Actinide Chemistry and Repository Science Program into an achievement by securing an appointment with the Department of Energy in 2021. (Photo Credit: Matt Comins)
The DOE Scholars Program is designed to provide opportunities and attract talented undergraduate and graduate students, as well as recent graduates, to appointments that are carefully designed to help prepare participants towards the full range of entry and mid-level research, technical and professional positions within DOE and organizations that support the DOE mission.
Throughout his coursework, Comins collaborated with LANL scientists and conducted a three-month internship with the ACRSP group to study plutonium (VI) chemistry in the presence of citrate, a repository-relevant organic ligand. Their findings related to the safe operation of the WIPP and other repositories for nuclear waste. The team probed actinide mobility through aqueous speciation of plutonium and curium in the presence of organic ligands.
“Organic ligands present in nuclear waste, like citrate and ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (edta), can mobilize actinides through complex formation, thereby increasing total actinide solubility,” Comins said. “However, a lot of information about how these elements behave under conditions relevant to nuclear waste, like high alkalinity or reducing conditions, are lacking for some of these systems.”
Their findings shed light on the redox effect of plutonium, which has a rich redox chemistry, in the presence of excess citrate. With the ongoing petition for disposal of additional surplus plutonium at the WIPP, which could increase the overall radioactivity more than three-fold, the research produced was extremely important.
“We also provided an updated speciation regime for Pu(VI) in the presence of citrate, including stability constants for acidic to neutral conditions, and identification of a newly described complex under alkaline conditions which requires further investigation,” he said.

Comins presenting his team’s research poster at the 18th International Conference on the Chemistry and Migration Behavior of Actinides and Fission Products in the Geosphere. (Photo Credit: Matt Comins)
Comins and his co-researchers submitted their research to the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Science and Technology, and Comins himself presented their findings at the 18th International Conference on the Chemistry and Migration Behavior of Actinides and Fission Products in the Geosphere in 2023.
Comins also had to opportunity to collaborate with scientists from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Karlsruhe, Germany, to study aqueous curium speciation in the presence of citrate using time-resolved laser fluorescence (TRLFS) spectroscopy. The three-month collaboration included coupling their TRLFS measurements with a statistical multi-way analysis and quantum chemical calculations to both decompose experimental TRLFS spectra and model their proposed molecular structures at an atomic level. Their research was submitted to the peer-reviewed journal Chemosphere.
Throughout his appointment in the DOE Scholars Program, Comins learned the value of collaboration, patience and prioritizing his time to adapt to his co-researchers. Comins believes that capitalizing on the freedom internships provide is beneficial to your current and future work. In 2023, Comins was awarded the Notre Dame Graduate School Professional Development Award as well as being a recipient of the Arthur J. Schmitt Leadership Fellowship in Science and Engineering from 2020 to 2024.
After his appointment, Comins accepted a postdoctoral position at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory with the Radiochemistry Group researching nuclear forensics. Comins is hoping to continue engaging in high impact, applied science using the skills and knowledge he gained from his appointment with the DOE and graduate school.
“Part of science is figuring out what doesn’t work, and it shouldn’t be discouraging; rather, I came to think of ‘failure’ as getting closer to my goal,” he said. “Whether or not a given experiment worked out as planned, it was nonetheless a learning experience. Once I got the data that I was finally looking for and the interpretation made sense, it was extremely rewarding,”
The DOE Scholars Program is funded by DOE and administered through the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE). ORISE is managed for DOE by ORAU.