Soderholm’s research has focused on rare-earth and actinide science since her early work on electronic and magnetic properties of their solid-state oxides, including the newly discovered high-temperature superconductors. Through her research, she has also sought to understand f-ion speciation in solution, taking advantage of X-ray probes at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source to link molecular correlations in solution to bulk thermodynamic properties. Her recent efforts center on the use of machine learning to study molecular structures in connection with low-energy processes for separation of f-block elements from complex mixtures.

Soderholm received her Ph.D. from McMaster University (Canada), after which she spent a NATO postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France. Her career at Argonne began with a postdoctoral fellowship. Over several years, she moved up the ranks, becoming a senior chemist in 2001. She also spent several years as an adjunct professor at the University of Notre Dame.

Soderholm won the University of Chicago Board of Governors’ Distinguished Performance Award in 2009 and became a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2013. She is currently a senior scientist and an Argonne Distinguished Fellow.