News 2024
11/26/24 - Ally receives a Significant Contribution Award
Congratulations to Allison Probert, who has received a Significant Contribution Award from the Materials Science and Technology Division (MSTD) within American Nuclear Society! This award is presented in recognition of her presentation "Correlating microstructure to the thermal conductivity of irradiated U-19Pu-10Zr fuel" at the Pu futures conference.
11/25/24 - Upcoming talks at the MRS Fall Meeting
Catch up with our work at the upcoming MRS Fall Meeting and Exhibit in Boston, MA (December 1-6). Mitch will give an invited talk "Phase-dependent properties of irradiated metallic fuels" that will highlight our most recent results. Additionally, the results of our BES project "Mechanisms of Irradiation-Induced Grain Subdivision" will be presented by Alhassan Issaka, check out his talk "Impact of Grain Boundary Structure on Defect Evolution of Polycrystal Aluminum under Irradiation Through Molecular Dynamics Simulations".
11/19/24 - Dr. A is honored by Nuclear News
Nuclear News, flagship trade publication for the nuclear community, announced this year's inaugural 40 under 40 list, which includes Dr. A.
11/4/24 - Brandon and Tanvi publish a paper on HT-9
Congratulations to Brandon and our alumnus Tanvi, whose paper "Observations of the irradiation hardening behavior in neutron irradiated HT-9 steels through in situ TEM nano-mechanical tests" has been published in the Journal of Nuclear Materials! In this paper, we use nano-compression and nano-tensile tests to access mechanical properties of HT-9 irradiated to 4.29 dpa and identify mechanisms governing irradiation-induced hardening in these steels.
10/4/24 - Upcoming talk at the NuMat conference
Dr. A has an invited talk "Correlating microstructure and properties of irradiated U-Zr based fuels" at NuMat conference in Singapore (October 14-17).
10/1/24 - Catch up with Mary's work at the Global conference
Mary will present her work "Utilizing Machine Learning Techniques to Understand Microstructural Changes in Irradiated U-Zr Annular Fuel" at Global conference in Tokyo, Japan (October 6-10).
9/30/24 - Upcoming talks at the NuFor conference
Come catch up with our forensics work at the upcoming NuFor conference in Manchester, UK (October 2-4). We have a talk "Investigating surface morphology of uranium ore concentrates: does sample preparation impact the result?" and a poster "Using Machine Learning to Understand the Effects of Process History on Particle Morphology of Uranium Ore Concentrates" that highlight Dr. A's research at the LLNL, where she spent the summer participating in their faculty mini-sabbatical program.
9/26/24 - Ally and Mitch publish their second paper
Congratulations to Ally and Mitch, whose paper "Nuclear fuel qualification: history, current state, and future" has been published in Progress of Nuclear Energy! If you are curious about fuel qualification and what can be done better to help us qualify new fuels, give this a read.
9/24/24 - New paper alert
The results of our collaboration on RPV steels, "Thermal and dynamic partition of dumbbell interstitials in complex concentrated alloys", has been published in Scripta Materialia. Check it out!
9/23/24 - NSUF awards RTE proposals!
Congratulations to Mary, Ally, and Bao-Phong for receiving Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) rapid turnaround experiment (RTE) funding! RTEs offer researchers the opportunity to perform quick analysis of a small number of samples. Mary's proposal "Quantification of Radial Constituent Redistribution in Annular U-10Zr Irradiated Fuel Using EPMA", Allison's proposal "Irradiation effects on thermal conductivity and phase evolution in low burnup U-10Pu-10Zr", and Bao-Phong's proposal "In-Situ TEM Nanomechanical Testing of Neutron Irradiated U-10Zr" are 3 out of 19 proposals that have been selected for an award. Well done, team!
9/21/24 - New paper alert
The results of our NSUF-2 project, "Exploring constituent redistribution in irradiated U-19Pu-14Zr fuel via electron probe microanalysis", has been published in the Journal of Nuclear Materials. This is one of the three papers that explore the use of EPMA on Pu-bearing fuels. Stay tuned for more exciting results!
9/12/24 - New paper alert
The results of our collaboration on 2D materials, "Spin crossover solids as phase change materials to actuate strain in 2D MoS2", has been published in the Chemistry of Materials. Well done, team!
9/01/24 - Upcoming talk at the Pu futures
Catch up with Ally's work at the upcoming Pu Futures - The Science conference in Charleston, SC (September 8-12). Allison will be presenting the work titled "Correlating Microstructure to the Thermal Conductivity Irradiated U-19Pu-10Zr Fuel".
8/16/2024 - MANATEE Group welcomes new members!
Manatee group is expanding and we are excited to welcome Bao-Phong Nguyen (MSE) and Sadie Wicks (MSE). Join us in welcoming them and stay tuned for their accomplishments!
6/28/2024 - New paper alert
The results of our collaboration on 2D materials based on the work conducted by our alumnus Kory Burns, “Probing phonon focusing, thermomechanical behavior, and moiré patterns in van der Waals architectures using surface acoustic waves”, have been recently published in npj | Computational Materials. Well done, team!
6/17/2024 - Upcoming talks at the 2024 ANS Annual Conference
Catch up with our research at the upcoming ANS conference in Las Vegas (June 17-19):
June 18, 10 am, Banyan B
Allison Probert, "Pre-Transient Characterization of Historic EBR-II Pins for Transient Testing"
June 18, 10 am, Banyan A
Mitch Mika, "Historical, Contemporary, and Future Perspectives on Fuel Qualification"
June 18, 1 pm, Banyan A
Cynthia Adkins, "Assessment of Local Thermal Conductivity and Microstructure of Ultra-Low Burnup U-20 wt% Pu- 10 wt% Zr Alloy"
Mary Sevart, "Comparison of Porosity Distribution in U-Zr and U-Pu-Zr"
June 18, 3:15 pm, South Seas D
Panel moderated by Dr. A, "Accelerating Qualification of Materials for Nuclear Environments"
6/04/2024 - University Program Review was a success!
Catch up with our forensics project at the University Program Review held at Texas A&M University June 4-6. Jack is presenting a poster on microstructural characterization of U/Pu particulates (poster F4).
5/28/2024 - Brandon published his first paper!
Congratulations to Brandon, whose first author paper "A critical review of irradiation-induced changes in reactor pressure vessel steels" has been published in Progress of Nuclear Energy! In this paper, we perform a critical review of the published experimental data and compile experimentally reported values for dislocation loop size/density, precipitate size/density and yield stress into an easily downloadable format that can be used by both experimentalists and modelers.
4/17/2024 - Allison publishes her first paper!
Congratulations to Ally, whose first author paper “An assessment of UO2 and ATF concept fuel performance modeling demands against current experimental capabilities under LOCA conditions” has been published in Annals of Nuclear Energy! This work compiles and digitizes all publicly reported data for LOCA testing into a database that will help modeling community to validate their simulations.
4/11/2024 - Congratulations to Ally!
Congratulations to Allison Probert for successfully passing her proposal defense! She has officially advanced into doctoral candidacy.
4/08/2024 - Congratulations to Cade for receiving UNLP scholarship!
Congratulations to our undergraduate student Cade Finney for receiving a prestigious University Nuclear Leadership Program scholarship! Cade is one of 59 students in the US who was awarded the scholarship this year. We are also excited to announce that Bao-Phong Nguyen, an incoming graduate student, received UNLP fellowship!
4/04/2024 - New paper alert
The results of our collaboration with Missouri S&T and INL, “Atom probe tomography of segregation at grain boundaries and gas bubbles in neutron irradiated U-10 wt% Mo fuel”, have been recently published in Materials Letters. Well done, team!
3/27/2024 - Congratulations to Mitch Mika!
Congratulations to Mitch Mika for successfully passing his proposal defense! He has officially advanced into doctoral candidacy!
3/8/2024 - New paper alert
Congratulations to Dr. Kory Burns, group alumnus, for publishing a paper on “Deep learning-enabled probing of irradiation-induced defects in time-series micrographs” in APL Machine Learning! The paper uses convolutional neutral networks to evaluate production of defects and quantify defect densities.
3/1/2024 - Congratulations to Brandon Bohanon!
Congratulations to Brandon Bohanon for successfully passing his proposal defense! He has officially advanced into doctoral candidacy!
2/29/2024 - Upcoming talks at the TMS 2024 Annual Meeting
Catch up with our research at the upcoming TMS 2024 Annual Meeting & Exhibition in Orlando (March 3-7):
March 4, 5:30 pm, Hyatt Regency R
Sarah Lantzy, “Exploring stability of WSe2 under heavy ion irradiation”
Mary Sevart, “Utilizing machine learning techniques to correlate constituent redistribution, fission gas bubble structures, and thermal conductivity changes in annular, irradiated U-Zr fuels”
March 5, 3:20 pm, Hyatt Celebration 16
Aaron Rabin, “Decoupling acceleration energy and ion effects in defect production through ion irradiation of substrate supported MoS2”
March 7, 10:45 am, Hyatt Rainbow Spring I
Assel Aitkaliyeva, “Evaluating the strength of TRISO pebbles via drop tests and nondestructive techniques”.
2/2/2024 - Mitch publishes his first paper!
Congratulations to Mitch, whose first author paper “Automating SAED phase identification using ML” has been published in Journal of Materiomics! In this work, we utilize the recent advances in computer vision and machine learning (ML) to automate the indexing of SAED patterns.