Sergei Y. Tolmachev was promoted to USTUR director

Dr. Sergei Tolmachev was promoted from laboratory manager to USTUR director on October 1, 2010, following the retirement of 2005-10 director, Dr. Anthony James.

Dr. James will be retained as a part-time consultant. He will be available through ACJ & Associates to contribute his practical and theoretical internal dosimetry experience to the USTUR Research Center’s externally-funded, extramural research projects.

Dr. Tolmachev has been a research associate professor of radiochemistry in the College of Pharmacy, Washington State University (WSU) since 2007. He managed laboratory operation and research in the fields of actinide radiochemistry and mass spectrometry, in support of internal dosimetry and actinide biokinetics research at the USTUR. Dr. Tolmachev supervised the radiochemistry program and the National Human Radiobiological Tissue Repository (NHRTR).

View Dr. Tolmachev’s CV

Dr. Tolmachev has over 15 years of experience in analytical methods development and actinide analyses in environmental and biological samples. He is an expert in ‘state-of-the-art’ analytical instrumentation, including various types of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometers (ICPMS), high performance liquid chromatography and α-spectrometry systems. Dr. Tolmachev earned his diploma of nucleartechnology engineer (Master of Science equivalent) at the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology of Russia, Moscow, in 1993. He majored in radiochemistry and completed his Master’s thesis project at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Researches (JINR) in Dubna. After graduation, he joined the Radioanalytical Research Group at JINR. In 1997, he was awarded a scholarship by the Ministry of Education, Culture, and Sport (MONBUSHO) of Japan for research and doctoral study at Kyushu University (Fukuoka) in the field of Environmental Radiochemistry/Radioecology. His research focused on 210Po, 36Cl, and 3H determination and behavior in the environment. He developed a radioanalytical protocol for 36Cl determination by projectile X-ray accelerator mass spectrometry (PX-AMS). Dr. Tolmachev was awarded a Doctor of Science degreein 2001. He continued his scientific career with two post-doctoral fellowships in Japan: at the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute (JAERI, Tokai-mura), Department of Health Physics, Internal Dosimetry Laboratory; and at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS, Chiba), Research Center for Radiation Safety. During this period his research focused on applying ICP-MS techniques for uranium (234U, 235U, 238U and 236U) and 232Th isotopic determination in human body fluids, actinide biokinetics, and internal dose assessment. He established a rapid automated flow-injection ICP-MS method for uranium isotopic determination for the purpose of internal dose assessment. Dr. Tolmachev conducted a milestone study of the concentration and daily excretion of uranium in urine of Japanese in order to define further the exposure of the Japanese public to natural uranium. The study was published in 2006. His Japanese research also included method development to apply sector field ICP-MS to measure 226Ra in environmental samples.

Dr. Tolmachev is an internationally recognized scientific specialist. While at WSU, he has established active scientific collaborations with the University of Technology Sydney Bio‐Imaging facility and the Radiation Protection Bureau at Health Canada, together with leading U.S. laboratories (Northern Arizona University, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and the Savannah River Site Analytical Laboratory). He is a member of the Society of Nuclear and Radiochemical Sciences (Japan), the Japan Health Physics Society and the U.S. Health Physics Society.

Dr. Tolmachev serves on the Editorial Board for the Japanese Journal of Health Physics (November 2009 – March 2011). Dr. Tolmachev is an ad hoc reviewer for Journal of Radiation Research, the Journal of Geosciences and Radiochimica Acta. He is fluent in Russian, Ukrainian, English, and conversant in Japanese.