Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at Illinois Department Head and Prof. Jim Stubbins was invested as a Donald Biggar Willett Professor in the College of Engineering at Illinois in a ceremony Tuesday, September 10, 2013, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications on the Engineering campus.
NPRE Associate Department Head Rizwan Uddin introduced Stubbins, and spoke of his many accomplishments on behalf of the Department as well as worldwide contributions to nuclear engineering research and education. College of Engineering Dean Andreas C. Cangellaris then presented Stubbins with a medal commemorating the honor. Also invested were Michael F. Insana, professor of Bioengineering, and Rakesh Nagi, professor of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering.
Stubbins has served as head of NPRE since 1999. He earned his BS in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan, and an MS in Nuclear Engineering and a PhD in Materials Science from the University of Cincinnati.
Following his studies, Stubbins became a guest scientist at the Institute for Materials and Solid-State Research, Kernforschungszentrum Nuclear Research Center in Germany, and, later, served as guest scientist in the Department of Metallurgy and Science of Materials at University of Oxford and England’s Harwell Labs. He was a research scientist-engineer with General Electric’s Energy Systems Programs Department in Schenectady, N.Y., before joining the Illinois faculty in 1980.
Stubbins has extensive experience with materials development and applications for a variety of advanced energy systems with particular emphasis on nuclear energy systems.
He has held visiting scientist positions over many years with national laboratories, including Argonne, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, and Pacific Northwest in the United States. He has interacted with several international scientific laboratories and universities, including guest scientist appointments at Risø National Laboratory, Denmark, and as a guest faculty member at the University of Pisa, Italy.
In the mid-1990s, he co-directed an NSF I/UCRC on Corrosion in Multiphase Systems. He is a scientific member of the International Institute for Carbon Neutral Energy Research partnership with Kyushu University, Japan.
An American Nuclear Society Fellow, Stubbins also received the American Society for Engineering Education Glenn Murphy Award and was named 2004 “International Scientist of the Year.” In fall 2011, he received the campus Media Relations Award, recognizing his professional response to numerous media inquiries following the Japanese nuclear reactor disaster earlier that year.
Photos from the ceremony can be seen on NPRE's Facebook page.