Kathryn Huff

Kathryn D. Huff is an American engineer who served as the assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy from 2022 to 2024. She is currently an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign.

Early life and education
Huff attended high school in Bellville, Texas before graduating from the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science. During high school, she also took mathematics and science courses at the University of North Texas. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics from the University of Chicago and a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Huff has a twin sister.

Career
In 2003 and 2004, Huff worked as a research assistant at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. She also worked as a research assistant at the University of Chile and Kavli Institute for Cosmology. In 2010, she was an intern at the Idaho National Laboratory, specializing in advanced nuclear energy systems integration. From 2011 to 2013, Huff was a graduate researcher at Argonne National Laboratory. After finishing her PhD, she was Postdoctoral Fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science and the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium. Since 2016, Huff has worked as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. In May 2021, Huff was selected to serve as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Acting Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy. In January 2022, Huff was nominated to serve as Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, for the Department of Energy. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on May 5, 2022 by a 80–11 vote and sworn in on May 11, 2022. She resigned on May 3, 2024, returning to the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign as an assistant professor.