Kathryn (Katie) Harke in the acting Deputy Group Leader for Global Security in the Nondestructive Evaluation Group. She earned a BS degree in physics from Georgia College and State University in 2015. Her graduate work focused on the study of materials in extreme conditions and in 2017 she received her MS in physics by defending her thesis, “White-Beam X-Ray Diffraction and Radiography Studies on High-Boron Containing Borosilicate Glass at High Pressures.” She received her PhD in physics in 2019 with the defense of her dissertation “High-Pressure Studies on Borosilicate and Bulk Metallic Glasses.” She has conducted more than two dozen experiments at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source and Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s High Flux Isotope Reactor and Spallation Neutron Source and was an active participant in the Stockpile Stewardship Academic Programs throughout her time in graduate school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.  

At LLNL, Katie completed two years as a postdoctoral researcher in the Nondestructive Evaluation Group and was converted to a staff member in 2021. Katie led a team to develop the 3-Ring Flash X-ray system, comprised of 15 450 kV flash X-ray sources opposite digital detectors. By utilizing few view reconstruction algorithms, this system can take a 3D X-ray movie of dynamic events and can field up to 1.5 lbs of TNT equivalent. Her field of interest is dynamic X-ray radiography at a range of scales, from small scale gas gun work at the Dynamic Compression Sector, to mid-scale work with high explosives utilizing flash X-ray radiography, to large-scale MeV systems like the Scorpius accelerator at the Nevada National Security Site. Along with her experimental work, she is also well versed in simulation tools, ALE3D, for hydrodynamic simulations, and HADES, for radiographic simulations.