Paula Cable-Dunlap

Paula Cable-Dunlap is an American chemist and Oak Ridge National Laboratory Corporate Fellow. She develops protocols and analytical techniques for nuclear nonproliferation.

Paula Cable-Dunlap
Alma mater	Western Carolina University Clemson University
Scientific career
Institutions	Oak Ridge National Laboratory Savannah River National Laboratory DuPont
Thesis	Development of radio frequency powered glow discharge devices for applications in mass spectrometry (1995)

Early life and education

Cable-Dunlap is from North Carolina. She is the daughter of a nurse, and was determined to work in medicine as a child. She studied chemistry at Western Carolina University, and was an intern at DuPont. At DuPont she became interested in analytical chemistry and worked in the Imaging Systems Department. This internship inspired her lifelong "obsession" with instrumentation. She was a doctoral researcher at Clemson University, where she started to work in nuclear science. Her doctorate developed RF-powered discharge devices for use in mass spectrometry. During her doctorate she was awarded funding from the United States Department of Energy to characterise glass made from vitrified radioactive waste. Her electrochemical method avoided the need for toxic acids and created a plasma that could be sampled.

Career

In the early 1990s Cable-Dunlap started working on nuclear nonproliferation. Cable-Dunlap joined Savannah River National Laboratory in 1992. Following the Gulf War she started to analyse samples from Iraq to evaluate for nuclear activity. This involved a painstaking process of removing the background material, and eventually resulted in her building an entirely new method centred on ionisation. Her invention, a portable aerosol contaminant extractor, was used i the Atacama Desert and aboard the Mars Rover.

In 2010 Cable-Dunlap joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she worked on nuclear nonproliferation. At Oak Ridge Cable-Dunlap analyses particles from environmental samples (including emanations from seismic vibrations) to identify indicators of clandestine nuclear activity (e.g. smuggling or illegal weapons programmes). She helped to launch the Ultra Trace Forensic Science Centre. The centre develops instrumentation to detect the residual chemical signatures of nuclear materials and reactions. To detect nuclear threats at low levels, Cable-Dunlap collects various "nuclear signatures", from effluents (discharges of solid or gas), emanations (sound waves and electromagnetic pulses), and seismic measurements. She uses artificial intelligence to determine whether or not the signals that she collects are meaningful – AI models trained on operational logs can quickly decipher whether or not a particular signal is meaningful. She is responsible for maintaining compliance with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which looks to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.

Cable-Dunlap was named an Oak Ridge National Laboratory Corporate Fellow in 2024.

Select publications

• P. Cable-Dunlap; J. J. DeGange; L. S. Nichols; D. C. Duckworth; S. H. Park; G. J. van Berkel (January 2005). "Interface of a particle collector with an on-line electrochemically-modulated separation system for analysis of airborne radioisotopes". Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry. 263 (1): 177–181. Bibcode:2005JRNC..263..177C. doi:10.1007/S10967-005-0034-0. ISSN 0236-5731. Wikidata Q128834332.
• S. P. LaMont; C. R. Shick; P. Cable-Dunlap; D. J. Fauth; T. R. LaBone (January 2005). "Plutonium determination in bioassay samples using radiochemical thermal ionization mass spectrometry". Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry. 263 (2): 477–481. Bibcode:2005JRNC..263..477L. doi:10.1007/S10967-005-0078-1. ISSN 0236-5731. Wikidata Q128834338.
• Melissa A. Dempster; W. Clay Davis; R. Kenneth Marcus; Paula R. Cable-Dunlap (2001). "Investigation of the role of hollow cathode (vaporization) temperature on the performance of particle beam-hollow cathode atomic emission spectrometry (PB-HC-AES)". Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry. 16 (2): 115–121. doi:10.1039/B005811O. ISSN 0267-9477. Wikidata Q128834342.