Employee Spotlight: Kaleb Wilkes

Meet ORAU employee Kaleb Wilkes. Kaleb is an ORAU contractor working under the National Student Services Contract (NSSC) at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As an Engineering Support Modeler in Research Triangle Park, NC, Kaleb supports EPA’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) and Center for Environmental Measurement and Modeling (CEMM) along with the Air Methods and Characterization Division (AMCD). Kaleb’s work with both CEMM and AMCD is critical to supporting the laboratory's research and EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment.

CEMM conducts research to advance the Agency’s ability to measure and model contaminants in the environment. This includes research to provide fundamental methods and models needed to implement environmental statutes. Within CEMM, AMCD develops, evaluates, and applies advanced laboratory and field methods to measure, characterize, and analyze concentrations of pollutants in the air and at various emission sources.

Kaleb’s work involves comparing the products of incomplete combustion of short-chain PFAS and how they behave in comparison to their chlorinated homologues. The team would like to see if they can use their knowledge of chlorinated compounds to make better regulations for fluorinated compounds. They have found so far that PFAS can be much more challenging to destroy because they tend to break into smaller pieces. He is hopeful that since the larger molecules break up into shorter chains, if they destroy the shorter chains, then the larger ones will be broken as well. This would help change regulations for hazardous waste incinerators to treat these substances more efficiently and to reduce the amount of PFAS that is emitted into the air after incineration.

When asked what his favorite part of working at EPA has been so far, Kaleb said, “I really enjoy being given a task and having the time and resources to do it in a way that I feel proud of.”

Background

Kaleb graduated from North Carolina State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics. The academic experiences and the systems-oriented approach from physics led him to work with modeling the behavior of PFAS in Python using Cantera.

Fun Facts:  Kaleb enjoys making short films with his friends as well as learning about vintage computing and obscure world history. Kaleb is an Eagle Scout and has always taken an interest in the environment and sustainable practices. In addition, he is from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and remembers learning about GenX (a PFAS) in their water as a kid, so it’s exciting to do work that has real impacts on his hometown.