Tori Forbes grew up on a farm and in the small town of Western, Nebraska (pop. 225) and graduated from Fairbury Jr-Sr. High school in 1997.  She decided to leave the state to attend Beloit College in Beloit, WI and graduated with a B.S. degree in chemistry in 2001.  Since she didn’t know what she wanted to do with her life after graduation, she worked as a summer intern at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater Maryland, then became a teaching assistant for the Semester of Environmental Science at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA and a research assistant at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.  After a couple of years in the lab, she realized she loved research, so she decided to go back to graduate school  in environmental actinide chemistry with Professor Peter C. Burns in the Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences at the University of Notre Dame.  After graduation with a Ph.D. in 2007, she completed a postdoc with Professor Alexandra Navrotsky at University of California at Davis.  She came to the University of Iowa in 2010 and her current research interests include fundamental actinide chemistry, transport of nuclear waste, and development of metal organic nanotubes for water purification.  Outside of work she likes running with her dog, Pickles, paddle boarding and swimming with her kids at Lake McBride, and biking with her husband, Andrew.