Alyssa Shiel
Post-doctoral Fellow
Contact Information
- Office: 402 Natural History Building
- Telephone: 217-300-5956
- Email: ashiel@illinois.edu
Degree
- Ph.D. Oceanography, University of British Columbia
Research Interests
Environmental monitoring and remediation require techniques to identify the source and fate of metal emissions. Recent advances in the field of "non-traditional" stable isotope research, including Multi-collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (MC-ICP-MS) allow the analysis of the isotopic signatures of heavy metals including cadmium and zinc. In my dissertation, entitled “An investigation of Cadmium, Zinc and Lead Isotope Signatures and Their Use as Tracers in the Environment,” I evaluate cadmium (Cd) and zinc (Zn) isotopes as tools to identify the source and fate of metal emissions. I successfully use these metal isotopes to trace anthropogenic sources in the environment and demonstrate the advantage of combining these tools with lead (Pb) isotope “fingerprinting” techniques. As a Postdoctoral Fellow I am investigating the use of U isotopes as a tool for evaluating U(VI) reduction and reoxidation at the DOE Rifle, CO Integrated Field Research Challenge (IFRC) site.
PUBLICATIONS
- Shiel, A.E., P.G. Laubach, T.M. Johnson, C.C. Lundstrom, P.E. Long and K.H. Williams (2013) No measureable changes in 238U/235U due to the adsorption of U(VI) from groundwater at the Rifle, Colorado IFRC Site. Environmental Science and Technology (DOI: 10.1021/es303913y).
- Shiel, A.E., D. Weis and K.J. Orians (2012) Tracing cadmium, zinc and lead sources in bivalves from the coasts of western Canada and the USA using isotopes. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta 76: 175–190.
- Shiel, A.E., D. Weis and K.J. Orians (2010) Evaluation of zinc, cadmium and lead isotope fractionation during smelting and refining. Science of the Total Environment 408: 2357–2368.
- Shiel, A.E., J. Barling, K.J. Orians and D. Weis (2009) Matrix effects on the multi-collector inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometric analysis of high-precision cadmium and zinc isotope ratios. Analytica Chimica Acta 633: 29–37.