Travis Olds, Ph.D.

Biography

Travis Olds is assistant curator of Minerals in the section of Minerals & Earth Sciences. Travis obtained his B.S. in chemistry from Michigan Technological University in 2012 and received his Ph.D from the University of Notre Dame in 2017, where he explored the mineralogy and crystallography of the radioactive elements uranium and neptunium. From 2017-2019 he conducted post-doctoral research at Washington State University, as a part of the U.S. Department of Energy-funded Actinide Ceramic Materials Laboratory, which investigates the materials science of nuclear fuel.

Olds’ research focuses on the structure-property relationships of minerals and materials, employing spectroscopic, diffraction and particle scattering techniques to study them at the atomic scale. He is collecting a deeper understanding of the interactions between minerals and humans by studying “secondary minerals,” or those formed by weathering and oxidation near the Earth’s surface. Utilizing knowledge of chemistry and crystal-structures (so called crystal-chemistry) he uses minerals as inspiration for finding better performing materials and environmental processes.

With the help of an international group of friends and mineralogists, Olds has discovered or been involved in the description of 21 new minerals recognized by the International Mineralogical Association’s Commission on New Minerals, Nomenclature and Classification. Many of the new minerals contain uranium and provide researchers with a more complete outlook on certain aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle, from the mining of uranium, to mine remediation, and disposal of used nuclear fuel.

One recent example from our new finds is the mineral hydroxylpyromorphite, Pb5(PO4)3(OH), a member of the apatite group of minerals, the same ones forming your teeth and bones. Hydroxylpyromorphite is essential to removing lead from drinking water and until a recent find of large crystals by colleagues, its crystal structure was unknown. With this new structural information we are looking for ways to tune important properties of Pb-bearing apatites, such as solubility and reactivity, to limit the mobility of Pb in natural systems