Since 2024, Halen Solomon has served as an Assistant Research Scientist in the Flammability Reduction Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In this role, he provides technical laboratory support for the Public Health Risks to First Responders project, which aims to assess per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in firefighter gear and workplace environments. His responsibilities include operating and maintaining complex chromatographic instrumentation to analyze PFAS contamination. This work supports the development of standards, policies, and best practices to reduce firefighter exposure to these harmful chemicals.
Previously in the Polymers and Complex Fluids group, he has worked on building devices for creating high concentration/low volume protein droplets using microfluidic devices and characterizing them using various methods like light scattering and fluorescent microscopy.
Halen earned his B.S. in mechanical engineering at the George Washington University, where he has conducted research on soft matter mechanics and atomic force microscopy (AFM) characterization methods in Dr. Solares’s Scanning Probe Microscopy lab.