NPRE faculty and students have garnered a slew of national honors over the summer months.
Faculty
JP Allain gains ANS Fusion Energy Division Technical Accomplishment Award
The first University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty member ever to have been chosen for this honor, Allain has been cited “for pioneering work on in-situ plasma-material interaction diagnostics and surface chemistry in nuclear fusion devices.” Allain and his group have spent almost a decade examining plasma-facing surfaces to gain information about the interaction between the first wall and divertor of a fusion reactor with the plasma contained inside the reactor.
The group has designed the Materials Analysis Particle Probe (MAPP), an in-vacuo, in-situ characterization device that is attached to a fusion reactor to expose an ensemble of samples and characterize their surfaces in a shot-to-shot basis. MAPP’s diagnostics can register chemical changes in samples after their interaction with fusion plasmas without any influence of the external ambient and within the time scales of plasma shots over the course of a day.
MAPP’s capabilities include X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Thermal Desorption Spectroscopy (TDS), Ion Scattering Spectroscopy (ISS) and Direct Recoil Spectroscopy (DRS). This approach enables identifying characteristic surface chemistry variations as plasma conditions vary or as plasma physicists test different plasma regimes.
Allain has tested MAPP in the National Spherical Tokamak Experiment-Upgrade (NSTX-U) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), and has established a prolific and active collaboration resulting in over 20 peer-reviewed papers and multiple PhD theses. MAPP’s results, complemented with modeling and controlled in-situ laboratory experiments at Illinois, explain how surface chemistry can play a major role in retention of hydrogen under certain circumstances.
Allain’s group has identified the key role of the complex chemical interaction between carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and lithium, a liquid metal popular for use in fusion reactors. His work has implications in identifying mechanisms that can dictate recycling of hydrogen isotopes and ultimately fusion plasma confinement.
Allain has developed a close and fruitful collaboration with Prof. Predrag Krstic at Stony Brook University over the past decade through coupling MAPP results with computational modeling of these complex surfaces. Recently, both Allain and Krstic wrote a review on the challenges of plasma-material interaction (PMI) diagnostics under extreme conditions found in tokamak devices both present and future (see: Krstic et al. Matter and Radiation Extremes, 3 (2018) 145).
Allain also recently has written an invited review on the use of advanced in-situ PMI characterization approaches (see: Allain and Shetty, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 50 (2017) 283002)
Recently, Allain has served and led several panels for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Fusion Energy Sciences including the DOE FESAC Workforce Development panel in 2014, the DOE FES Workshop on Plasma-Material Interactions in 2015, and the DOE FESAC Transformational Enabling Capabilities panel in 2017. He has been the Deputy Leader of the U.S. Burning Plasma Organization (USBPO) in Fusion Engineering Science Topical Group since 2017.
An NPRE faculty member since 2013, Allain is an affiliate faculty member of the Bioengineering Department, the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. He is also Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship with the Technology Entrepreneurship Center.
Having earned his master’s degree and PhD from NPRE in 2000 and 2001, respectively, Allain worked previously as a staff scientist at Argonne National Laboratory and as professor in the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University.
The ANS Fusion Energy Division’s biennial national award, first presented in 1982, emphasizes a single technical contribution to fusion science and engineering. Past recipients have included individuals and teams from defense contractor General Atomics; national laboratories at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Oakridge and Idaho; and universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California-San Diego and University of California-Los Angeles.
ANS honors Ling-Jian Meng with Radiation Science and Technology Award
Meng, who has established within NPRE a world-premiere research group for developing radiation detection and imaging devices, has been cited for significant contributions to the field of radiological imaging, and their applications in healthcare, radiation detection, and nondestructive assessment. Meng’s group has developed a wide variety of detectors with a balanced performance unmatched by any existing gamma-ray detectors for X-ray and gamma ray imaging applications.
In the past decade, the Meng group has been at the forefront in developing advanced emission tomography instrumentations for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET) and X-ray emission tomography imaging. Meng and researchers at Northwestern University are using Meng's SPECT/magnetic resonance (MR) tool to study migration of genetically modified neural stem cells for targeting glioblastoma multiforme, the most aggressive cancer that begins in the brain.
Meng’s group has pioneered the use of emission tomography apertures for X-ray florescence computed tomography (XFCT) and X-ray luminescence computed tomography (XLCT). He and his students have developed a bench-top XFCT imaging system to study trace metal in biological samples. These metals are known to play important roles in healthcare-related topics, either as imaging contrast agents, as part of therapeutic agents, or as suspected causes of cancer, diabetes, and neural-degenerative disorders.
Over the past five years, Meng has promoted and established a new multi-disciplinary research direction that seeks innovative ways to re-engineer the interaction of ionizing radiation with living organisms to advance more efficient radiation therapy for curing cancer. To faciliate this effort, Meng and his Illinois collaborators from Bioengineering, Chemistry, Material Science and Engineering, and the College of Veterinary Medicine have established a multi-Principal Investigator working group called the Radio-Opto-Nano (RON) Group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. The RON group's mission is:
- developing and characterizing radio-reactive nanomaterials that could be used as imaging contrast, therapeutic agent, or deeply-embedded internal light sources for initiating opto-biological interactions
- developing radiation-induced and nanoparticle-mediated techniques for therapeutic delivery, controlled drug release, and noninvasive intervention of cellular, molecular and neural functions in deep tissue
- developing optical, x-ray and gamma-ray imaging techniques for studying interactions of ionizing radiation with nanomaterials, and for monitoring therapeutic delivery processes.
A member of NPRE’s faculty since 2006, Meng is an affiliate faculty of Illinois’ Bioengineering Department and Beckman, where he leads the RON group. He also has founded and led inter-institutional collaborations, including the partnership between the University of Illinois and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) for Research and Training in Molecular Imaging, and is a visiting Associate Professor at MGH and Harvard Medical School.
Meng has served as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (TMI) and guest editor of the Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section (NIM-A). He regularly serves in organizational roles in major professional meetings, such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference Room-Temperature Semiconductor X-Ray & Gamma Ray Detector (IEEE NSS/MIC/RTSD) conferences, and the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) annual meetings.
Meng earned his bachelor’s degree in modern physics in 1995 from the University of Science and Technology of China, and his PhD in physics in 2001 from the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher and an assistant research professor at the University of Michigan before joining NPRE.
Jim Stubbins chosen for ANS Landis Public Communications and Education Award
The national honor recognizes individuals for outstanding efforts, dedication and accomplishment in furthering public education and understanding of the peaceful applications of nuclear technology.
Stubbins, a Donald Biggar Willett Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, has been a faculty member of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering since 1980. He served as Department Head for 18 years until August 2017.
Among his most recent contributions has been the forum, “Nuclear Power: What it means in Illinois,” that was held in Chicago in October 2016. At that time, the state of Illinois was at risk of losing Exelon Corp. nuclear generation stations in the Quad Cities and Clinton. Working with national labor unions, Stubbins organized a daylong informational forum and invited all state legislators to learn about the consequences of the proposed closures.
The forum featured 17 experts, including from the Nuclear Energy Institute; the U.S. Department of Energy, elected state officials from both sides of the aisle, and local officials whose communities would be affected. Economic and environmental impacts were addressed. With little time remaining, the Illinois legislature approved bills that allowed the plants to remain open, and Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the legislation.
Stubbins also addressed public concern after a tsunami and earthquake devastated nuclear plants in Fukushima, Japan, in March 2011. He quickly arranged and oversaw a campus-wide seminar regarding the damaged plants. Over 300 individuals from the campus community as well as the public attended as Stubbins and other NPRE faculty members fielded questions.
He then became the university’s go‐to expert for the media in helping the public understand what the disaster meant for nuclear reactors and nuclear safety. During this period, he appeared on a number of national news shows including the ABC Evening News and CNN’s Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC among several others. His accessibility to the media and thorough explanation of events and the path forward led the University of Illinois to recognize him with that year’s Media Relations Award.
Stubbins has led nuclear engineering coursework and educational visits to major energy facilities between the University of Pisa, Italy, and the University of Illinois since 2003. This cultural exchange of over 600 students from Italy and the US has been the longest running international studies program at the University of Illinois and the only major educational exchange program at the University of Pisa.
Also internationally, Stubbins has led and supported NPRE faculty working with scientists and government officials in Jordan to establish nuclear power for that country, and, as Department Head, supported NPRE faculty and students’ summer trips to Sweden to learn how that country manages spent nuclear fuel storage.
Ruzic elected as SPIE Senior Member
Serving more than 264,000 constituents internationally, SPIE’s mission is to advance emerging, light-based technologies through information exchange, continuing education, publications, patent precedent, and career and professional growth.
Ruzic’s connection to SPIE has been through his research and development of EUV lithography. He has been an invited speaker at the organization’s conference on Advanced Lithography since the conferences’ creation. He and his students have published extensively in SPIE-related journals and conference proceedings.
A member of the Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering faculty the past 34 years, Ruzic has studied EUV lithography as part of the work of the Center for Plasma-Material Interactions, which he directs on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. Ruzic’s interests also include plasma-material interactions, liquid metals for fusion, etching and deposition for plasma processing, atmospheric-pressure plasmas for cleaning, adhesion, and film deposition; and magnetron sputtering applications.
In addition to his membership in SPIE, Ruzic also is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), the American Vacuum Society (AVS), and the American Physical Society (APS).
Xiang Liu recognized with ANS Mark Mills Award for PhD work
The national award recognizes the graduate student author who submits the best original technical paper contributing to the advancement of science and engineering related to the atomic nucleus. Liu currently is a postdoctoral researcher in the Characterization and Advanced Post-Irradiation Examination Division at Idaho National Laboratory.
According to Liu’s advisor, NPRE Prof. Jim Stubbins, Liu’s work resulted in some of the first reports on the neutron and ion irradiation performance of various advanced alloys for reactor application, and showed important links between the materials’ microstructure developed under irradiation and the materials’ structural performance. The work also identified new materials phases or precipitates in the neutron irradiated materials that cannot be found under ion irradiation condition.
National nuclear security meeting recognizes Aric Tate research with Best Poster
Tate gained the Best Poster Award for his work, “Muon Tomography with Fast Timing for Fissile Material Detection,” presented during the Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research & Development meeting held the first week of June. Universities and laboratory partners from across the country were invited to showcase their research to the broader nuclear security and nonproliferation community.
Muons are subatomic particles that make up much of the cosmic radiation reaching the earth's surface. Muon tomography measures the Compton scattering of cosmic ray muons to generate three-dimensional images of volumes. Muon tomography systems have been deployed to detect nuclear material in road transport vehicles and cargo containers for the purposes of non-proliferation.
Tate’s research proposes adding resistive plate chambers to muon detection systems to provide the systems with the high precision timing required to make a time-of-flight measurement. This addition would allow the systems to more precisely measure the energy of individual muons passing through the detector, improving the reconstruction of material held within a container.
Physics Prof. Matthias Perdekamp advises Tate, and his work is funded by the Consortium for Nonproliferation Enabling Capabilities (CNEC).
Nathan Reid poster chosen for First Place in ORNL summer session
Reid's project, “Glow-Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy of Neutron-Irradiated Tungsten,” won from among 48 posters presented. He has been mentored the past two summers by ORNL research staff scientist Lauren Garrison, an NPRE alumnae. The work was performed as part of the U.S.–Japan PHENIX Cooperation Project on Technological Assessment of Plasma Facing Components for DEMO Fusion Reactors.
Reid’s objective was to design a mounting system for testing neutron-irradiated tungsten samples exposed in ORNL’s High-Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR). Scientists believe the reactor’s high thermal neutron flux causes portions of the tungsten to undergo a chemical change and transmute into the elements rhenium and osmium. The change can cause the samples to become hard and brittle and decrease the tungsten’s thermal conductivity, which is a major concern to the fusion materials community.
The ORNL scientists use a radio-frequency glow-discharge optical emission spectrometer to measure the depth of the rhenium and osmium transmutations. Over the summer, Reid designed aluminum mounting fixtures that held the tungsten samples centered precisely over the plasma to make the measurements more consistent, reliable and repeatable.
Working in NPRE with Prof. JP Allain, Reid has focused his graduate work on thermo-mechanical and plasma-material interaction surface properties of irradiated tungsten materials.
Their work with Garrison and Chad Parish at ORNL is a collaboration between Allain’s Radiation Surface Science and Engineering Laboratory (RSSEL) group and Yutai Katoh’s nuclear materials science program at ORNL. Currently, Allain and his group are working with Kato’s group in designing and testing advanced plasma-facing component materials that are radiation tolerant under extreme nuclear fusion environment conditions. Tests at ORNL complement in-situ irradiation experiments at Illinois, including mechanical property and microstructure measurements, composition variation in novel alloys and new radiation-tolerant systems.
Allain's group also is leading an effort to design a new materials analysis particle probe (MAPP) plasma-material interaction (PMI) diagnostic for the new linear plasma device at ORNL known as Proto-MPEX (under the direction of Dr. Juergen Rapp). Reid is active on both projects and presented part of his MS thesis work at the poster session.
ANS scholarships awarded NPRE graduate, undergraduate students
Graduate students Anshuman Chaube of India and Andrei Rykhlevskii of Russia received John and Muriel Landis Scholarships. This is the second Landis Scholarship for Rykhlevskii.
Chaube is a first year PhD student working on multiphysics simulations of molten salt reactors and energy analysis aimed at minimization of carbon emission in Japan. Rykhlevskii is a third-year graduate student conducting research in advanced reactors and fuel cycles.
Graduate student Carly Romnes of Dulce, New Mexico, received a Michael Lineberry Graduate Scholarship. A first-year graduate student, Romnes is performing the data analysis for positron annihilation studies that North Carolina State University is conducting.
Senior Jacob Tellez of Monument, Colorado, won the William R. and Mila Kimel Nuclear Engineering Scholarship, and Senior Alyssa Hayes of Gurnee, Illinois, won the John R. Lamarsh Memorial Scholarship.
President of the Illinois ANS Student Chapter, Tellez has been working the past three summers at Los Alamos National Laboratory where he has conducted research on application of Lie group methods to various analytical and numerical models.
Hayes is working this summer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Higher Education Research Experience Program. She has also worked in the Center for Plasma-Material Interactions at the University of Illinois. A member of Women in Nuclear, Hayes has spent much of the past year traveling within Illinois, sharing information on nuclear power with high school, middle school and grade school students.