| Kabrena Rodda | |
| Workplaces: | United States Air Force Pacific Northwest National Laboratory |
| Alma Mater: | University of Washington Monash University United States Air Force Academy |
Kabrena Rodda is an American chemist and the Analytical Chemistry and Instrumentation Group Leader at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. She leads the PNNL strategy to tackle emerging chemical threats. She was elected Fellow of the American Chemical Society in 2024.
Rodda discovered the military during her high school studies. She entered the United States Air Force Academy, where she loved the chemistry aspects of her education.[1] One of her first military assignments would be serving as a chemical weapons inspector, performing analytical lab studies to support the United Nations. She completed a master's degree at the University of Washington, where she performed postmortem forensic toxicology. She returned to the Air Force Academy to teach chemistry, and then moved to Monash University for her doctoral studies in forensic medicine. Here she developed methods to screen human tissue for psychiatric medicines and drug misuse.
Rodda spent much of her career in the United States Air Force. She was first assigned to monitor weapons treaties. She joined the Director of National Intelligence to work on the United States' National Security Strategy.
At the United States Air Force she managed a $30 million nuclear nonproliferation program, where she gave advice on chemical issues at the National Counterproliferation Center.[2] As a colonel she was responsible for commanding detachments, squadrons and groups. She worked with the United Nations as a special commission inspector and laboratory chief in Iraq in the nineties, and has since led efforts to educate others on chemical threat. Twenty years later, working with the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Rodda wrote the American Chemical Society policy paper Preventing the Reemergence of Chemical Weapons.[3] Rodda worked on consequence management as part of the build up to the Sydney Olympics.
Alongside nuclear weapons, Rodda has studied the proliferation of synthetic drugs. She wrote a policy paper on legal highs and described them as the "new pandemic".[4]
Rodda eventually joined Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where she continued to work on chemical security, and the development of an ethical framework for chemistry research.[5]