About
Ricky Diaz
Principal and Founder
How We Started
ICA Labs was founded in 2013 by Ricky Diaz, a radiocarbon scientist with years of hands-on experience at commercial AMS dating laboratories. Ricky recognized a gap in the market: researchers needed a reliable, high-quality radiocarbon dating service that combined scientific rigor with a genuinely personalized experience. As commercial labs grew larger and busier, it became harder for researchers to get direct, substantive engagement with the scientists actually working on their samples.
ICA was built as an alternative. From the beginning, the goal was straightforward: deliver accurate, defensible radiocarbon dates with fast turnaround times, at a price that makes sense for both academic and industrial researchers — and to do it with the kind of direct, scientist-to-scientist communication that is increasingly rare in a high-volume commercial environment.
Who We Work With
Over more than a decade of operation, ICA Labs has analyzed thousands of samples submitted by researchers across a wide range of scientific disciplines.
Our clients include:
- Archaeologists dating organic artifacts, charcoal, bone, and shell from excavation sites
- Geologists working with sediment cores, peat, and organic material from stratigraphic sequences
- Environmental scientists studying carbon cycling, wetland dynamics, and paleoclimate records
- Forensic scientists requiring age determination for legal and investigative purposes
- Energy sector clients assessing biogenic carbon content in fuels and emissions
- Academic researchers at universities and research institutions worldwide
- Government agencies requiring defensible, documented radiocarbon data
If your work depends on knowing when something died, grew, or was deposited — we can help.
Tracer-Free Laboratory
ICA Labs operates a dedicated, tracer-free facility. We do not accept biomedical samples or any material containing artificial radiocarbon (14C). This policy is not incidental — it is fundamental to the integrity of our analyses.
Artificial 14C contamination is one of the most serious risks in a radiocarbon laboratory. Even trace amounts of tracer carbon introduced into a facility can compromise the accuracy of measurements across an entire sample batch. By maintaining a strict tracer-free environment, we eliminate this risk entirely and ensure that every result we report reflects only the natural radiocarbon content of your sample.
Researchers can submit their samples with confidence knowing that our laboratory environment is never exposed to elevated 14C activity.
Our Approach
At ICA Labs, your samples are handled personally by our scientific staff from the moment they arrive. When you contact us with a question — before submission, during analysis, or after you receive your results — you are communicating directly with the scientists working on your project. We keep our client relationships direct and personal by design, because we believe the best science happens when researchers can have a real conversation with the people analyzing their samples.
We also recognize that not every sample fits neatly into a standard protocol. Over the years we have developed new pretreatment methods specifically to address challenging or unusual sample types, working closely with clients to validate those methods before any charges are applied. If your material presents an analytical challenge, we would rather invest the time upfront to get it right than report a result we aren’t confident in.
We offer free pre-submission consultations for clients who are unsure whether their material is suitable for radiocarbon dating, what sample size is required, or which analysis is most appropriate for their research question. Reach out before you ship — we are happy to help you make the right decision.
Turnaround Time and Reporting
Our standard turnaround time is two weeks from sample receipt for all material types, including bone and other materials requiring more intensive pretreatment.
Results are delivered by email as a comprehensive PDF report that includes:
- Conventional Radiocarbon Age (years BP ± 1σ uncertainty)
- Percent Modern Carbon (pMC)
- Calibrated date ranges (at 95.4% confidence)
- δ¹³C value (if stable isotope analysis is requested)
- Percent biogenic/biobased carbon content (for biobased carbon assessment)
Quality Assurance
Every measurement reported by ICA Labs is supported by a rigorous quality assurance protocol applied consistently across all sample batches.
Accuracy and precision standards: We run IAEA-C5 and IAEA-C7 certified reference materials with every AMS wheel. These serve two distinct purposes: comparison against IAEA consensus values allows us to verify the accuracy of our measurements, while comparison against our own historical lab mean and standard deviation provides an ongoing check on precision and consistency over time. Together they give us — and our clients — confidence that our results are both correct and reproducible.
Process blanks: Every wheel includes a background blank that undergoes the same complete sample preparation procedure as the submitted samples — including pretreatment, combustion, and graphitization. This allows us to characterize and account for any carbon introduced during sample processing, not just during AMS measurement.
Our results meet the standard your work demands — whether that’s a peer-reviewed publication, a legal proceeding, or a high-stakes business decision.
Leading The Way
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Credentials
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Features
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Meet Our Team
The Professionals
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