Peter C. Burns

Burns earned a B.Sc. (Honours) in Geology from the University of New Brunswick (1988), an M.Sc. in Geology from the University of Western Ontario (1990), and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Manitoba (1994). His doctoral research focused on crystallography and mineral structures. He subsequently held an NSERC postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge and later at the University of New Mexico.

Academic career

After spending one year on the faculty of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Burns joined the University of Notre Dame faculty in 1997, where he has served as department chair and held several named professorships, including the Henry J. Massman Chair before being appointed the Dorini Family Professor of Energy Studies. He directed the Center for Sustainable Energy at Notre Dame (ND Energy), a multidisciplinary initiative on energy research. He has also directed the Actinide Center of Excellence as well as the Energy Frontier Research Center Materials Science of Actinides, and served as a principal investigator for research funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Burns has held a special-term appointment in the Chemistry Division at Argonne National Laboratory and has collaborated extensively with U.S. national laboratories on nuclear energy and actinide chemistry projects.