Lena Heffern

I am currently attending Arizona State University for an interdisciplinary PhD in Exploration Systems Design of Instrumentation. I enjoyed working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in the Nuclear & Chemical Sciences Division as a Post-Master’s Research Assistant from 2015-2017. My career focus is to be able to combine my passion for science with my engineering and analysis skills through instrumentation development related to remote sensing. I earned my Master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering with an emphasis in instrumentation from the University of New Mexico in May 2015. I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Physics from California State University: Chico in May 2013. At Chico I was a member of Sigma Pi Sigma, Society of Physics Students, and Tau Beta Pi (the engineering honors society).

SPS Alumni Information

SPS Chapter: California State University-Chico

Lena Heffern is available for student engagement in the following categories: virtual speaker. Send a request using this form .

Alum Location: Tempe, Arizona
Education Level: Masters
Disciplines: nuclear, applied, electronics, geophysics

Recent position: Research Assistant, Arizona State University
Job Description: I am an interdisciplinary PhD student in Exploration Systems Design of Instrumentation at the School of Earth and Space Exploration. I am currently working with Dr. Craig Hardgrove on development and/or characterization of a variety of nuclear spectroscopy instruments including SINGR (SIngle scintillator Neutron and Gamma-Ray detector), the LunaH-Map Mission’s Mini-NS, MiniPNG (a miniaturized pulsed neutron generator), and various other scintillator detectors. My responsibilities consist of developing techniques using active neutron sample analysis with deuterium-tritium neutron generators and dual scintillator detectors such as CLYC. Our testing is done in collaboration with both NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and Los Alamos National Labs. I have been debugging and characterizing electronic systems for use with CLYC pulse-shape discrimination algorithms, in collaboration with RMD Inc. and ASU’s electrical engineering department. I also have a secondary project with Dr. Lindy Elkins-Tanton working on characterizing the radiation environment of the metal asteroid, 16-Psyche, using DT neutron generators, gamma-ray and neutron detectors, and metallic samples (primarily iron meteorites), this is being done through continued collaboration with my previous employer at Lawrence Livermore National Labs. I do experimental work, data analysis, computation, simulation development, and verification testing for all of these projects. I am an active science team member on the LunaH-Map Mission to the south polar region of the Moon and a student science collaborator on the Psyche Mission to a Metal World.