Success Stories

Graduate Student Travels Across the Country to Gain Valuable Health Physics Experience at ORAU

Embarking on a new career path is never easy and often requires substantial personal and financial sacrifices. Just ask Margaret Cervera—a wife and mother who opted to travel nearly 1,400 miles to gain valuable experience in the field of health physics.

For Cervera, a graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in health physics at Colorado State University (CSU), the choice to leave her husband and seven-year-old daughter behind to travel to Oak Ridge, Tenn., for the summer wasn’t an easy decision, but one that will give her family a jumpstart on a bright future.

As a summer intern with Oak Ridge Associated Universities’ (ORAU) health physics and training program, Cervera traveled across the county’s midsection to gain what she called “respectable health physics experience.” Previously a quality control analyst in the pharmaceutical industry, Cervera earned a bachelor’s degree in microbiology with dual minors in chemistry and biotechnology from CSU, but her interest in radiochemistry steered her to the school’s health physics graduate degree program.

Despite her previous professional experience, Cervera wanted an opportunity to boost her skills in a hands-on, health physics learning environment and learn more about the unique characteristics of radiation.

Cervera specifically spent the summer researching and editing calibration and operation procedures for a Field Instrument for Detecting Low Energy Radiation (FIDLER), so that it can accurately detect and quantify exposure rates from small concentrations of plutonium isotopes during environmental surveys. “Accurate detection ensures that sites are remediated accordingly and conform to future uses without excess risk to workers,” Cervera explained.

She also gained experience assisting with a health physics training course, calibrated field survey instruments, researched and entered data for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Radium Antiquity database, and attended the Health Physics Society’s (HPS) annual meeting in Pittsburgh, Pa. Cervera currently serves as president of the student branch of the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the HPS.

Cervera said that despite the distance from her family, the experience has been invaluable. “It’s been very hard for us since we miss each other terribly, but we all felt that this internship was something that will ultimately help our entire family, not just me, so the sacrifice is definitely worth it,” said Cervera. “From a professional standpoint, I now have a well-known ‘gold star’ on my resume and, in advance of actually getting a job, know that I picked a field that I can be successful in and that I enjoy.”