ANS student members tour Oak Ridge National Lab

Twenty Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering students from the University of Illinois got the opportunity for a first-of-its-kind trip in February to Oak Ridge National Laboratory to tour facilities and meet with lab personnel, including NPRE alumni.

Alumna Lauren Garrison, Weinberg Fellow in the Nuclear Materials Science and Technology Group at Oak Ridge, coordinated the visit, designed to help students understand the national lab environment; provide them information on internships, graduate and post-graduate positions; and connect them with early career scientists working in different areas of nuclear.

Hosting the students, Garrison’s group within Oak Ridge’s Physical Sciences Directorate received help from the lab’s Reactor & Nuclear Systems Division, Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate, Nuclear Security & Isotope Technology Division, Fusion & Materials for Nuclear Systems Division, Neutron Sciences Directorate, and Energy & Environmental Sciences Directorate.

“This was the first visit of its kind sponsored by my division, and it impressed everyone that so many students attended,” Garrison said.

Aristidis (Aries) Loumis, president of the American Nuclear Society’s student section that organized the trip from Urbana, described as highlights the lab’s High Flux Isotope Reactor, panels on internships and working at a national lab, and interactions with lab personnel at the end of the day.

“Getting to talk to professionals in a field they’re going to work in is a huge relief off students’ shoulders,” Loumis said. “They get to stop thinking that internships and developing themselves professionally is unattainable; the people working (at Oak Ridge) are just regular people.”

Loumis said about half the participating students were undergraduates and half were graduate students. At least two of them have already confirmed internships with the lab, he said.