Luncheon Speaker: Joe Wong
Safari Journey to Kenya, Tanzania, and the Serengeti
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
11:00 AM
Cattlemens Restaurant
2882 Kitty Hawk Rd
Livermore, CA 94551,
Cost $40/ person
The speaker at our November 11 luncheon will be Joe Wong, LLNL retiree.
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Joe took a Safari Journey to Kenya and Tanzania in August 2023. He will share with us his exciting encounters with various wildlife, scenery around the foothills of Mt. Kilimanjaro and a hot air balloon ride above the Serengeti Plains.
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Dr. Wong came to the Lab in 1986 as a Senior Chemist and Group Leader within Chemistry and Materials Science. Joe's research interests at the lab covered a broad spectrum including spectroscopy using Synchrotron radiation, chemical dynamics, high temperature metallurgy, damage in NIF fused silica optics, catching phonons in plutonium and many other challenging topics.
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Through his career, Joe has published over 190 refereed journal articles, holds 7 patents, co-authored a textbook on “Glass: Structure by Spectroscopy” , and earned numerous awards, including a Humboldt Award by Germany. Just before retiring Joe was honored as a Fellow of the American Physical Society- a highly prestigious award for measuring, for the first time, the long-sought Phonon Dispersions in plutonium.
Joe is a native of Hong Kong. He earned a B.Sc. in Pure & Applied Chemistry in 1964 and a B.Sc Hons (1st Class) in Physical Chemistry in 1965 at the University of Tasmania, Australia. In 1966, Joe came to the US for his graduate study and earned his PhD in Physical Chemistry at Purdue University in 1970.
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Before coming to the Lab, Joe was a staff chemist at the General Electric Corporate Research and Development, Schenectady, NY in the period 1970-1986. In 1986, he was bestowed a D.Sc. degree by his mater University of Tasmania. While at the Lab Joe also served as a Consulting Professor of Stanford University at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lab (SSRL).
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