Candace Harris, who was the fifth black woman to earn a Ph.D. in physics from FAMU in 2018, is an experimental physicist in the Weapons Complex and Integration (WCI) program at Lawrence Livermore National Lab (LLNL) in California.
The WCI is a premier program that provides foundational capabilities to our national security missions and ensures the success of the strategic nuclear deterrent into the future.
The San Francisco native’s journey wasn’t an easy one, she shocked that she was the only physics graduate in her graduating class from Spelman College. From there, she went on to earn a Masters from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It was there that she was introduced to LLNL as a Summer Scholar working with the National Ignition Facility and Photon Sciences Directorate.
As a Ph.D. candidate at FAMU she researched nuclear forensics and became the nation’s first National Nuclear Security Administration’s minority serving institution graduate fellow at the Oak Ridge National Lab in Tennessee.
After earning her Ph.D., Harris returned to the LLNL as a post-doctoral researcher in the Joint High Energy Density Science Center and at the end of her term, she accepted an offer to stay on an experimental physicist in support of stockpile management.
Harris, and her team in the stockpile stewardship program, are involved in an ambitious effort to improve the science and technology for assessing an Aging Nuclear Weapons stockpile without relying on nuclear testing. They work to extend the life of our aging nuclear weapons which face challenges with aging materials, older designs, and obsolescent parts for weapons with a 20-year service life. Routine surveillance, diagnostic tools, and new techniques such as additive manufacturing help our team forecast and detect material-related problems earlier.
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