Experience

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  Radiant

  • Los Angeles Metropolitan Area

  • Head of Nuclear Engineering

    • Oct 2022 - Present
    • Los Angeles Metropolitan Area

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  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  • United States
  • Research Services
  • 700 & Above Employee

  • Senior R&D Staff; Group Leader

    • Oct 2020 - Sep 2022

    ◦ Served as deputy director of the SCALE code system, managing analysis scope and products to ensure quality and consistency with research direction.◦ Collaborated on the Kairos Hermes pebble-bed reactor severe accident analysis and review assessment with the SCALE-MELCOR analysis toolset.◦ Collaborated on NEAMS Shift and Griffin radiation transport and reactor physics applications to molten salt reactor (MSR) designs to demonstrate workflows.◦ Directed and developed a research group focused on pushing world-leading science in research and advanced reactor physics design and analysis.◦ Directed the DOE-NE Transformational Challenge Reactor Program, coordinating with industry and regulatory partners to demonstrate additive manufacturing technologies.◦ Coordinated iterative design and analysis of High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) low-enriched uranium (LEU) cores, incorporating fabrication and qualification feedback.◦ Advised on molten salt reactor source term analyses and Lagrangian plug flow modeling with the SCALE/TRITON and SCALE/ORIGEN tools.

  • R&D Staff

    • Jan 2019 - Oct 2020

    ◦ Led the design and analysis thrust of the DOE-NE Transformational Challenge Reactor Program, collaborating with material science, facility & licensing, and reactor design staff to deploy a nuclear reactor using additive manufacturing technologies.◦ Collaborated in an interlaboratory effort to analyze Molten Salt Breeder Reactor dose and define specifications for a Molten Salt Reactor Experiment transient benchmark.◦ Developed reactor physics and fuel cycle models of the Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor for safeguards, source term, off gas system, and isotope production analyses.◦ Collaborated on advanced low-enriched uranium dispersion fuel design optimization and analyses with Shippingport reactor fuel.◦ Advised on development and deployment of automated optimization tools for High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR) fuel design.◦ Advised on the implementation of neural networks for fuel cycle simulation, ORIGEN reactor library interpolation, and accelerating inverse depletion methods.◦ Led high-fidelity as-built reactor physics analysis in support of HFIR fuel characterization and operations.

  • Associate R&D Staff

    • May 2016 - Dec 2018

    ◦ Led a multidisciplinary team of nuclear and mechanical engineers to design a reactor built using advanced manufacturing techniques.◦ Led a multi-laboratory effort to develop the DOE-NE Molten Salt Reactor Campaign modeling and simulation plan, communicating with industry, academia, laboratory staff, and leadership in other DOE-NE programs.◦ Calculated fuel salt content and developed models of molten salt reactor fueling, storage, and processing systems for safeguards characterization and analysis.◦ Developed molten salt reactor neutronics and fuel cycle analysis tools for the SCALE code package, leading the integration in ORIGEN, NEWT, and TRITON.◦ Coordinated the modeling and simulation effort of the DOE-NE Molten Salt Reactor Campaign, supporting dose estimation, dynamic modeling, and chemistry modeling.◦ Developed design optimization tools and performed design studies of a HFIR low-enriched uranium core with the Shift Monte Carlo tool.◦ Collaborated with Transatomic Power Corporation to perform neutronic and fuel cycle analysis and design optimization for their molten salt reactor design.

  • Postdoctoral Research Associate

    • May 2014 - Apr 2016

    ◦ Performed depletion and criticality analysis of boiling water reactor spent fuel assemblies with different operating conditions for burnup credit analysis.◦ Performed core design and analysis of a prismatic fluoride salt–cooled advanced demonstration reactor concept using Serpent and PARCS.◦ Developed tools and performed neutronic analysis for fast and thermal spectrum molten salt reactors to characterize them for the fuel cycle options campaign.◦ Designed a small nuclear rocket engine using accident tolerant fuel in KENO and performed optimization studies on packing fractions, fuel loads, and core geometry.◦ Performed depletion simulation, neutronic analysis, and developed Python scripts in support of the HFIR LEU conversion program and HFIR operations.◦ Tested the depletion and lattice physics performance of SCALE modules (TRITON, Polaris, NEWT, and KENO) for light water reactor geometries.◦ Developed a Python script and built TRITON inputs to automatically generate the 1,470 ORIGEN cross section libraries released with updated versions of SCALE.

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  University of Michigan

  • Greater Detroit Area

  • Graduate Student Research Assistant & Instructor

    • Sep 2008 - Apr 2014
    • Greater Detroit Area

    ◦ Simulated the Fort St. Vrain (FSV) gas-cooled reactor with MCNP, using RELAP5 to analyze thermal feedback. Wrote Python scripts for writing and updating MCNP and RELAP5 inputs.◦ Modeled ~20 FSV pulsed neutron and other startup experiments with MCNP and performed sensitivity studies on design parameter uncertainties.

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  Los Alamos National Laboratory

  • Santa Fe, New Mexico Area

  • Graduate Research Assistant

    • Jun 2012 - Aug 2012
    • Santa Fe, New Mexico Area

    ◦ Wrote a research Monte Carlo code in MATLAB to calculate alpha eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of infinite media using a transition rate matrix method akin to the fission matrix method. This method improves upon the k-alpha iteration in MCNP.

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  Oak Ridge National Laboratory

  • Knoxville, Tennessee Area

  • Graduate Research Assistant

    • Jun 2010 - Aug 2010
    • Knoxville, Tennessee Area

    ◦ Calculated heat deposited in the HFIR reactivity control system with MCNP to investigate causes of control cylinder clad corrosion, spalling, and failure.◦ Analyzed the burnup of control cylinder absorbers and cladding with ORIGEN and determined the axial heat flux distribution with simple heat transfer models.

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  P2 Energy Solutions

  • San Antonio, Texas Area

  • GIS Technician (Summer)

    • 2006 - 2007
    • San Antonio, Texas Area