Allowing Engineering Open House visitors to step into and walk through a virtual nuclear reactor was the cool factor that led judges to award the Virtual Education and Research Laboratory Third Place for "most engaging exhibits" at the 2019 EOH event.
VERL uses virtual reality to solve problems that cannot be solved otherwise, and provides a supplement to ongoing educational methods. Many of the visitors enjoyed using the Oculus Rift, a headset that simulates visual contexts present in the real world. Programs that could be viewed included one based on the former TRIGA nuclear reactor that had operated for 38 years on the Urbana campus before being closed in 1998.
See photos from the American Nuclear Society Student Chapter and Women in Nuclear!