Stewarding our nation's nuclear stockpile doesn’t seem like the kind of work that requires creativity from its engineers. 

But for Amber Guckes, a member of a scientific team at the Nevada National Security Sites (NNSS) charged with ensuring that the nation’s nuclear stockpile remains safe, secure, and reliable, creative problem solving is what set her apart as a White House Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) honoree.

A three-time UNLV College of Engineering graduate, Guckes grew up dancing, drawing, and dabbling in fashion design. At the NNSS, her creativity has surfaced in the design and development of novel radiation detectors in support of stockpile stewardship experiments.

“Fashion design seemed like a career that would allow me to be expressive and creative in ways that were comfortable and familiar to me,” she said. “But I had several teachers acknowledge my talents in math and science, and they encouraged me to pursue a STEM career that would leverage those talents for the greater good. That really resonated with me: to create for the greater good.”

While her teachers planted the seed, her father gave her the final push to explore engineering — specifically nuclear engineering — as a career. 

“The rest is history,” she said.

Asking and Initiating 

Just like in a sustained nuclear chain reaction — where one neutron splits a uranium atom, leading to a release of energy and an escalating reaction of neutrons begetting neutrons — earning the PECASE is the culmination of persistent and positive forward motion. Guckes says that asking for one opportunity led to another, and another, and another.

“I’m now an avid believer that the answer will always be no until you ask the question,” Guckes said. “The worst-case scenario is that they say ‘No, I can’t help you’ or ‘No, I don’t have an opportunity right now.’ The best case scenario is they say, ‘Yes, I have an opportunity for you. Yes, I have a connection.’ If you want it, don’t be afraid to ask.”

Her career's chain reaction was triggered soon after she entered UNLV as a freshman physics major. During a conversation with a friend, she discovered a major that might be a better fit. 

“My friend told me that it was UNLV’s mechanical engineering department that has a nuclear engineering graduate program. So, I ended up changing my major with every intent of moving into the graduate program,” she said.

The second breakthrough moment came soon after, when she approached Denis Beller, now-retired nuclear engineering professor, for a research assistant position in his lab.

“It was Dr. Beller who gave me my first job as a nuclear engineer,” Guckes recalled. “He taught me MCNP (Monte Carlo N-Particle), a radiation transport code that I use nearly every day in my job now. He gave me the technical skills I needed to jumpstart my nuclear engineering career.”

Beller’s industry connections also proved paramount. Even though she grew up in Pahrump, Nevada, with the Nevada Test Site (as it was called at the time) practically in her backyard, Beller's connections gave Guckes her first true introduction to the NNSS through a summer internship in 2014. 

As she moved through her graduate education, she tapped into mechanical engineering professor Alex Barzilov’s connections — who was her thesis and dissertation advisor — to land  collaborative research projects with the Site Directed Research & Development team at the NNSS.

“It was all about leveraging those connections,” she said, adding that her work in Barzilov’s lab focused on developing and characterizing novel radiation detector systems.

Now a decade later, Guckes is the lead researcher on several SDRD projects and technical manager of the NNSS dynamic instruments group. And she's nurturing the careers of several UNLV graduate students herself.

“The most gratifying thing is to have come full circle,” she said. “It’s really neat to have been in their shoes just a few years ago, and now I’m helping them gain the skills and abilities necessary to join the workforce after they graduate in a STEM career.”

One of those recent UNLV graduates is Kaleab Ayalew, who also worked in Barzilov’s lab. Guckes brought him on full-time to her group after he worked two summers as an intern. In his first year, Ayalew proposed two SDRD projects and they both got funded.

“I’ve never heard of that happening for an early career staff scientist. He’s brilliant,” Guckes said, adding that most of the staff who work at the North Las Vegas office of the NNSS are UNLV graduates.

Barzilov recalls Guckes as “one of the best” graduate students in UNLV’s nuclear engineering program, where, in addition to earning her bachelor’s, master’s, and Ph.D. degrees, she also earned two graduate certificates.

“We continue to collaborate on research projects engaging my current students and providing them with excellent hands-on experience that often leads to employment,” Barzilov said. “The NNSS/UNLV partnership is a powerful pipeline for nuclear workforce development.”

Next-Level Nuclear Detection and STEM Mentorship

Her commitment to both professional growth and developing the STEM student pipeline at both the K-12 and college-level likely prompted several colleagues to nominate Guckes for the prestigious PECASE, which comes with a $250,000, five-year research grant. The award recognizes scientists and engineers who show exceptional potential for leadership early in their research careers.

Part of the nomination package highlighted her team’s work on the multi-layered avalanche diamond detector — or MAD — for short. The novel radiation detector is made of multiple synthetic diamonds at 10 microns of thickness — a typical diamond detector is 500 microns thick — “so it’s much thinner,” Guckes said. 

“We take multiple, thin diamonds and stack them on top of each other with interweaving metal electrodes,” Guckes said. “This design enables the multiplication of the signal that you see. It can amplify really small radiation signals.”

Guckes and her team developed the first iteration of the design in 2019 and continue to refine it with support from the NNSS. The PECASE will take the design to the next level.

“I’m incredibly humbled to receive this award and grateful for my colleagues who saw my potential and talent,” Guckes said. “I envision that the PECASE can be used to mature the MAD detector design to a point where it’s no longer a prototype.”

Stuart Baker, NNSS distinguished member of the technical staff, was among the nominators.

“This type of recognition is extremely impressive,” Baker said in a statement. “I’ve worked with Amber on detector projects for NDSE (Neutron-Diagnosed Subcritical Experiment), and I found she is a great researcher, very thorough, and presents our work in a great way for communicating with our laboratory partners.”

In addition to sharing her work with partners and fellow scientists at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, in another full-circle moment, Guckes has stepped into the role her former teachers occupied as a mentor through several STEM outreach activities. Just as they helped her channel her creativity through STEM, she’s now making science and engineering accessible and exciting for the next generation through programs like the Nevada Afterschool Network’s NV Flight Crew initiative, Brigham Young University’s engineering capstone teams, Nevada Science Bowl, and the Girl Scouts of Southern Nevada.

“When I was a teenager, I thought an engineer was the person who drove a train — not someone who could creatively express themselves through the design of novel technologies that make the world better,” Guckes said. “So, I think educating young people that this is what a career in STEM really looks like is important to seeing more of them choose this path.

“When they have this information, then they can ask themselves: ‘Is this something I want for my life? Can I see myself doing that?’ I hope the answer is yes.”