Meet Our Consultants

Dr. Mike Zach, a retired Senior Materials Processing Researcher at ORNL. Zach has had an unusual career path by apprenticing as a jeweler and bronze sculptor with a monk in Florence, Italy, and spending a decade in art and retail. He received his baccalaureate from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point in 1997 and his MS and PhD from the University of California, Irvine, from 1997–2002 with the electrodeposition of nanowires. He was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, on a nanobiogeochemistry project and a Glenn Seaborg Postdoctoral Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory on superconductivity and magnetism. He spent a decade as a professor of analytical chemistry at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point, leading an active research program. For the past decade, Zach’s perfect set of skills—formed by his broad background—translated into the ability to turn extremely rare enriched stable isotopes into precision nuclear targets for scientific experiments and precursors for medical radioisotopes.