NUCLEAR ENGINEERING

Dr. Danon is the Director of the Gaerttner Electron Linear Accelerator (LINAC) Center at RPI, which houses a powerful 60 MeV pulsed electron LINAC used primarily as an intense pulsed neutron and gamma source. Dr. Danon’s nuclear data research group develops methods and performs experiments to measure neutron induced reactions and cross sections.

Dr. Danon’s group develops novel radiation detectors, data acquisition systems, and data analysis methods for nuclear data application and other applications. This research includes development of novel high efficiency, large area, zero bias solid-state neutron detectors.

In addition to nuclear data activities, Dr. Danon is a pioneer in the area of pyroelectric crystal acceleration. Together with his students he developed x-ray and neutron sources that utilize simple heating of these crystals and thus eliminate the requirement for high voltage power supply. Current research includes laser or light driven crystal based accelerators.

Dr. Danon published more than 240 articles in archived journals and conference proceedings. He advised 18 Ph.D. and 9 M.S. students that graduated; he currently advises 6 Ph.D. students and teaches courses on radiation technology and physics of nuclear reactors.

For more information, visit my web page www.rpi.edu/~danony

As a lecturer, Dr. Haley's research is on innovative curricula and award winning blended/hybrid courses in MANE and Core Engineering. He also has an industry background in:

• nuclear criticality safety analysis;
• Monte Carlo and deterministic simulations of systems and experiments;
• mathematical and statistical modeling and software development;
• analysis of nuclear power generation, operation, and policy; and
• developing and implementing quality assurance methodologies and procedures

At RPI, Dr. Ji leads the Rensselaer Nuclear Engineering Advanced Modeling and Simulation Group (R-NEAMS), focusing on the development of advanced computation methods/tools that are applied to the areas of nuclear energy, medical physics, nuclear criticality safety and space exploration. These methods include new coupling methods for multiphysics analysis of nuclear reactor systems, Monte Carlo modeling of radiation transport in stochastic media, on-the-fly sampling of thermal inelastic scattering reaction at any temperature based on S(alpha, beta) nuclear data, multiphysics models for coupled granular flow and fluid flow simulations in pebble-bed reactors, new algorithms on heterogeneous parallel CPU-GPU-Coprocessor architectures to accelerate Monte Carlo simulations, and multiphysics modeling of heavy ion induced electro-thermal transient damage to electronic devices. Dr. Ji has been leading or co-leading research projects funded by Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Department of Energy (DOE), National Institute of Health (NIH), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications and served on the program and organizing committees of various national and international professional societies, workshops and conferences. More details of Dr. Ji's research group can be found at http://neams.rpi.edu

Dr. Kang’s research focus lies in innovations of risk assessment of safety-critical systems, intrinsically safe nuclear power, intelligence of control and protection, and design and evaluation of emergency procedure. Dr. Kang’ research group in Nuclear Plant Reliability and Safety Laboratory develops advanced methods for risk analysis. Dynamic risk assessment and digital system reliability are current funded research topics. Dr. Kang has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed journal articles and 120 conference presentations. He advised 17 graduate students for Ph.D. or M.S. in KAIST (Korea) and Khalifa University (UAE). Currently he advises 4 Ph.D. students at RPI and teaches reactor reliability and modeling and analysis of uncertainty.

Dr. Lian has been working on ceramic materials as waste form and fuel matrix applications over last 20 years. His research mainly focuses on the long term performance evaluation of ceramics as potential matrix for incorporating fission products and actinides, specifically materials behavior under extreme radiation environment encountered under relevant geological repository conditions and reactor environments. He is currently working three key thrust areas in the fields of nuclear engineering:

1. Development of advanced waste forms for complex waste stream (including actinides and fission products) particularly on effective management of DOE EM wastes;
2. design and characterization of advanced fuel materials with enhanced thermo-mechanical and accident tolerance for current LWR and advanced nuclear energy systems;
3. the development of advanced structural materials (such as oxide dispersion-strengthened alloys) and fundamental understanding of their performance under relevant nuclear application conditions.

Lian’s recent efforts are focused on the development of advanced materials for better control of radiation through the nano-scale materials design concept. Such radiation-tolerant materials are able to sustain exposure to radiation, high temperatures, and corrosion, critical for extending the lifetime of components and contributing to the safer, more reliable operation of nuclear systems. One of important topics is composite fuels with enhanced fuel performance and accident tolerance. He is very experienced in using advanced materials fabrication approaches, e.g., field assisted sintering technology by spark plasma sintering, to sinter and fabricate advanced ceramics and composites with controlled microstructure at different length scales, and explore their thermo-physical properties. His research group is performing state-of-the-art fabrication of nuclear fuels with controlled microstructure that can provide critical experimental data needed to validate multi-scale multi-physics MARMOT under the DOE NEAMS (Nuclear Engineering Advanced Modeling and Simulation) program.
On scholarship, Dr. Lian has published 3 book chapters and more than 200 refereed journal papers, which have been cited for about 6000 times according to SCI with a H-index of 41.

Dr. Liu's research....

Dr. Malaviya's research....

Dr. Shi’s research focuses on nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics and safety, including two-phase flow modeling, experimentation, and numerical simulation; small modular reactor design; and thermal-hydraulics in high-temperature gas-cooled and molten-salt-cooled reactors (Generation IV nuclear reactors). Dr. Shi’s research stems from a deep understanding of physics in nuclear engineering and has always emphasized mechanistic modeling of phenomena of interest. Dr. Shi’s group performs both integral- and separate-effect tests in laboratory-scale test facilities. We also apply and develop advanced measurement techniques to provide high-resolution experimental data to meet the requirements of the current verification and validation methods. The resulting experimental data are utilized to validate models in both system analysis codes and commercial CFD software. Currently, Dr. Shi’s group is exploring a diverse range of issues related to advanced nuclear energy systems, such as passive safety system design and verification, high-temperature compact heat exchanger design and modeling, impurity purification system and mechanical filter designs, and tritium control, in support of regulation, licensing and future commercial deployment of those reactors.
For more information, visit https://www.thl-rpi.com/

Dr. Barry's research....

Dr. Forrest Brown is a Senior Research Scientist with the Monte Carlo Codes group in the X Computational Physics Division at LANL. He has extensive experience and expertise in radiation transport analysis, reactor physics, criticality safety, high performance computing, parallel/vector computing, random sampling, computer benchmarking. He has been a lead developer for the MCNP, RACER, and VIM Monte Carlo codes at LANL, KAPL, and ANL. Forrest is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society with over 300 technical publications. He is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan and RPI. Honors awarded to Forrest include: ANS Gerald C. Pomraning Award, ANS Distinguished Service award, Los Alamos Achievement awards, Defense Programs of Excellence awards, GE Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, and others.

Dr. Sutton's research....

Dr. Block's research....

Professor Lahey is an international authority in multiphase flow and heat transfer technology and was formerly Director of the Center for Multiphase Research (CMR) at Rensselaer. He was previously Dean of Engineering at RPI and has served as Chairman of the Department of Nuclear Engineering & Science and the Faculty Senate. Prior to joining Rensselaer in 1975, he held several technical and managerial positions with the General Electric Company, including overall responsibility for all domestic and foreign R&D programs associated with Boiling Water Nuclear Reactor (BWR) thermal-hydraulic and safety technology. He has received numerous honors and awards, including the E.O. Lawrence Memorial Award of the USDOE, the ANS Seaborg Medal, the AIChE Kern Award and the Glenn Murphy Award of the ASEE. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the Russian Academy of Science-Bashkortostan (RAS), a Fellow of the ANS and ASME, was Editor of the Journal of Nuclear Engineering & Design, is a member of the Board of Managers of PJM Interconnection, LLC., and is a life member of RPI's Palmer C. Ricketts Society of Patroons. Professor Lahey has been a Fulbright and an Alexander von Humboldt Scholar and has held visiting senior faculty positions with several foreign universities. His hobbies include skiing, SCUBA diving, Kang Duk Won karate, and Enology. He was a Commandeur, La Confrerie des Chevaliers du Tastevin, and is a former Chevalier de L'Ordre Modial de la Confererie Chaine des Rotisseurs.

Dr. Podowski's research....

In 1967 Professor Steiner joined the Research Staff of the Reactor Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, TN. From 1967-1969 he worked in several areas relating to the analysis of Advanced Fission Reactors. In 1969 he joined the Staff of the Fusion Energy Division where he worked in various aspects of fusion energy development including the design of conceptual fusion reactors, environmental health and safety aspects of fusion power, and in the nuclear analysis of advanced fusion systems. At ORNL, Dr. Steiner directed a number of programs for the Laboratory and in 1978 was selected to be the overall Director for a national team, which was designing a near-term fusion demonstration device called the Fusion Engineering Device. This team consisted of scientists from all over the United States. In 1981 Dr. Steiner joined the Faculty of the Nuclear Engineering Department at RPI as Institute Professor of Nuclear Engineering. Since his arrival at RPI Prof. Steiner has been engaged in research relating to fusion energy development and also in the development of courses for the Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics Programs at Rensselaer.