NPRE Gains Second Round of NRC Funding for Faculty Support

Recently receiving a second round of funding from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NPRE has gained a total of $1.2 million since 2011 to support new faculty.

NPRE Department Head Jim Stubbins said the NRC will supply $450,000 more toward the effort, to be matched by the Department, the University of Illinois, and the College of Engineering for a total of $600,000 over a three-year period. The NRC funded a similar three-year proposal for the Department in 2011, so the two awards will overlap.

The resources will be applied toward the costs of new faculty members. Clair J. Sullivan and Yang Zhang will join NPRE in Fall 2012, and Assistant Prof. Tomasz Kozlowski started in Fall 2011.

Sullivan is a radiation detection expert, and has most recently worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C. Zhang, a Clifford G. Shull Fellow at Oak Ridge

National Laboratory in Tennessee, concentrates his research on the physics of complex materials through integrated microscopic experimental probes and predictive computational modeling. Kozlowski, an expert in nuclear reactor simulations, came to NPRE from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology Division of Nuclear Power Safety.

The new hires bring to 11 the number of tenure-track faculty in NPRE, and the Department has plans to increase that number by even more in the near future, Stubbins said.

Filling NPRE’s teaching mission has become more challenging as the Department’s undergraduate enrollment has grown tremendously over the past several years. The Fall 2011 undergraduate enrollment, with just over 200 students, was the largest in NPRE’s history.