Clemson University

08/20/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 08/20/2024 08:13

College of Science alumni spotlight: Kemper Talley ’11

August 20, 2024August 20, 2024

Whether from an emerging infectious disease causing the next pandemic, a catastrophic accident or deliberate misuse by a bad actor, biological threats pose an increasing danger.

It's the job of Kemper Talley '11, a senior scientist with Raytheon BBN, to help ensure the U.S. government and the Department of Defense are able to detect and mitigate those threats.

"The country's chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) defense program has become increasingly focused on the biological threats, and whether they are naturally occurring, accidental or intentional doesn't change the fact that we must be prepared," Talley said. "The technologies I work on are ensuring preparation for an inevitable bio threat."

Talley's work focuses on the detection and identification of biological hazards using DNA and RNA sequencing.

"Everything has a fingerprint, essentially," he said. Because of biotechnology advances, not only can DNA be read, it can be written and edited.

Kemper Talley received the National Defense Industry Association Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) Defense Joseph D. Weinard Award in 2022.

Some foreign countries maintain biological weapons programs.

"It's important that we understand how that changes the landscape - both the available drug and beneficial landscape and the harmful landscape of things that could be created as more toxic materials or potentially pandemic-enabling pathogens," he said.

"We anticipate that future wars, if they do need to be fought, will need to be fought in a CBRN contested environment. Our goal is to be able to fight through and win in those kinds of environments and so that's why these technologies are really important."

Talley, who has loved science since elementary school, attended the South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Mathematics (GSSM), a two-year residential public high school that offers opportunities for the advanced study of science, math and engineering.

Not letting physics beat him

He failed his first physics test.

"Physics wasn't going to beat me. I took it as a challenge," said Talley, who studied physics both years he attended GSSM, including quantum physics and thermodynamics.

Each GSSM student participates in a summer research experience between their junior and senior years. Talley was placed at Clemson and worked with Emil Alexov, a professor of biophysics and bioinformatics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, on protein-protein interactions.

"It was fascinating work," said Talley, whose wife Aliceann is also a Clemson graduate. "I had never intended to go to Clemson…but I decided the work was a lot of fun and that I wanted to keep doing it."

He participated in EUREKA!, a five-week summer research program for first-year Clemson Honors students. He continued to do research with Alexov throughout his time at Clemson, publishing five papers on biophysics as an undergraduate student.

Because of the education he received at the Governor's School, Talley was able to skip most of the early coursework in physics and take advanced classes. During his sophomore year, he took quantum physics, a class normally taken by seniors.

Not a typical course of study

"Clemson was very nice to me early on, letting me take graduate level courses and not constraining me to a typical course of study," he said. "I had to get some letters signed at the end before I graduated saying, 'Yes, you can substitute Physics 811 for Physics 122.'"

Talley spent the summers of his undergraduate career conducting research. He spent a summer each at the Clemson Research Park working on high performance computing, the University of Central Florida for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on experimental biophysics.

While at Clemson, he was named a Goldwater Scholar and received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. After graduation, Talley spent the summer doing research at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).

"I wanted to go to the Oak Ridge National Lab because I had always wanted to find a place where brilliant scientists come together and work on what they thought was important and break things in new and exciting ways by asking the hard questions," he said. "I will say that where I'm at today, at BBN, I found something that is very close to that."

In a combined program through UT and ORNL, Talley began a Ph.D. in biophysics before switching to energy science and engineering with a concentration in nuclear science.

After earning his Ph.D., he left academia to work in industry and began working for FLIR, later acquired by Teledyne, where he developed radiation detectors and radiation detection algorithms.

World-changing event

"My world changed there when Putin invaded Ukraine because we were asked to provide every radiation detector we could for the efforts, and it was going to be my algorithms being used," he said. "You're acutely aware of every issue that faces your detector. You've done the best that you can with the available resources at the time, but you always know that with more resources, you could have done something better. Fighting those constraints and those priorities became something that I've had to deal with more and more as I've moved into Department of Defense work."

Now, Talley said he aims to deliver at the end of his projects something that the government could use without him ever touching it again.

"I've had to learn don't let perfect be the enemy of good and certainly not good enough. It is better to have something that works 100% of the time at 80% effectiveness versus something that works 10% of the time at 100% effectiveness," he said. "That's just the reality for these guys with boots on the ground."

When he's not trying to protect the nation against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear threats, Kemper Talley enjoys swing dancing. Photo provided by Kemper Talley.
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