NPRE welcomes record number of graduate students

9/9/2016 Susan Mumm, Editor

Written by Susan Mumm, Editor

NPRE welcomes record number of graduate students

A record number of 91 students are enrolled in graduate study this fall in Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at Illinois.

Making this the largest enrollment in at least a dozen years, the total graduate student number has been boosted by the arrival of 21 new students, coming to Urbana-Champaign from eight countries: the United States, Poland, Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon, and Russia.

Department Head Jim Stubbins believes NPRE’s hiring of eight new faculty members, doubling the total faculty since 2011, is one reason for the increased interest among graduate students.

“I think we had more students accept us because of our faculty. There’s a lot more opportunities to work with people,” Stubbins said.

The new faculty has expanded the department’s impact in nuclear power research, with expertise gained in computational, experimental, materials and risk analysis aspects. New investigations in plasma/fusion technologies have been undertaken, particularly since the arrival of the HIDRA (Hybrid Illinois Device for Research and Applications) facility. NPRE’s contributions to radiological and nuclear medical applications also are on the rise, and will continue to grow with the addition of faculty member Shiva Abbaszadeh in January.

Hanna Schamis, coming to NPRE from the University of Michigan, plans to work with Associate Prof. J.P. Allain on plasma-material interactions for fusion applications. “We are studying the correlation between the plasma performance on NSTX-U (a tokamak at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory) and the surface chemistry of the plasma-facing components,” Schamis said.

Having earned a bachelor’s from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nate Colgan wants to examine nuclear power’s implications for space exploration. “I’ve decided to study thermohydraulics and cooling/power generation systems for small reactors that could be used as a power source for a manned Mars or lunar base in the near future,” Colgan said. Working with Assistant Prof. Caleb Brooks, Colgan has gained a Fellowship from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to support his studies.

Andrei Rykhlevskii will work with new Assistant Prof. Katy Huff on coupled neutronics and thermal hydraulics simulations for advanced reactors. With an undergraduate degree at Moscow State Technical University in Russia, Rykhlevskii will pursue an academic career and hopes to become a professor.

New graduate student Matthew Parsons will delay his arrival at the Urbana campus for a year while he works at ITER (the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor in France) on a Fulbright Scholarship. The ITER project aims to make the long-awaited transition from experimental studies of plasma physics to full-scale electricity-producing fusion power stations.

When he does arrive in Urbana, Parsons, who earned his bachelor’s from Drexel University, will work on HIDRA with Prof. David Ruzic and Research Assistant Prof. Daniel Andruczyk. “Specifically, I’ll be developing new plasma control techniques for HIDRA in an effort to enhance HIDRA’s abilities to test the novel reactor materials technology being developed at CPMI (the Center for Plasma-Material Interactions).

“I chose NPRE because it is one of the few programs in the world where I will be able to get hands-on experience with a working fusion experiment,” Parsons said. “HIDRA has some unique capabilities that will allow it to address some significant research challenges facing the development of fusion energy. That’s an opportunity too good to pass up!”

 

 

 

 

 

 


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This story was published September 9, 2016.