Amy Cuthbertson (Fed)

 For her Ph.D., Amy worked with Prof. Susan Richardson at the University of South Carolina, and  focused on the discovery and quantification of disinfection byproducts. She also helped discover new disinfection byproducts in swimming pools and spas using non-target gas chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry (GC-HRMS). For her postdoctoral research at the University of California – Berkeley with Prof. David Sedlak, she studied in situ chemical remediation at Superfund sites and the formation of oxidation byproducts and their reactions with biomolecules using liquid chromatography high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS). For her second postdoctoral position at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory with Dr. Gregg Beckham, she worked on several projects related to the deconstruction of plastics for chemical upcycling. There she used GC- and LC- HRMS to elucidate the structures of complex unknown mixtures of plastic deconstruction products from autoxidation and pyrolysis and developed quantitative methods for yield analysis. She also analyzed research polymers properties and additives using many different techniques. She is currently working as a Research Chemist in the Chemical Sciences Division at NIST in Charleston, SC with a focus on persistent organic pollutants (POPs), chemicals of emerging concern (CECs), plastic additives and non-target analysis (NTA) using mass spectrometry.

2019 University of South Carolina Dean’s Award for Excellence in Leadership