MTV hosts University Program Review - Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences

By Courtney Wagoner, Project Manager, Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification

The Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification (MTV) hosted a successful annual University Program Review (UPR) meeting on June 7-9, 2022, in Ann Arbor, MI. The meeting was hosted in-person at the Michigan League on the University of Michigan’s campus and via WebEx. This annual review provides a venue for students and collaborating scientists to showcase their research and allow programmatic oversight and technical interchange between student researchers, National Laboratories, and government research managers.

The UPR meeting welcomed 3 Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D)-funded consortia, MTV, Nuclear Science and Security Consortium (NSSC), and Enabling Technologies & Innovation (ETI). The 2022 UPR meeting assembled 273 participants (196 in-person attendees and 77 were registered to join virtually). The meeting was kicked off by UM College of Engineering Dean Prof. Alec Gallimore. This talk was followed by DNN R&D leadership talks by Dr. David LaGraffe and Col. Keith McManus. Consortia leadership gave overview talks on the activities and successes of each consortium. Activities included presentations consisting of 54 oral research presentations and 70 posters from different disciplines and topic areas: (1) Data Science, Modeling, and Simulation, (2) Fundamental Science, (3) Detection Technology, (4) Nonproliferation Signatures and Observables.

On June 7, MTV hosted a 2-hour poster reception, and 70 posters were presented by students from 14 universities within the 3 consortia.

National lab affiliates participated in two recruiting events over lunch June 7 and June 8, where in-person students and national lab affiliates were able to network and discuss research and collaboration opportunities. 7 national labs were represented at the luncheon events.

On June 9, 12 students were given best presentation awards:

Best national lab collaboration:

Stefano Marin, University of Michigan (MTV), “Generation of Angular Momentum in Fission”
Austin Mullin, University of California, Berkeley (NSSC) “Prospects for improving light collection in large-volume water-Cherenkov detectors will wavelength shifting plates”
Caleb Chandler, Colorado School of Mines (ETI), “Photoinitiated Cationic Polymerization of Vinyltoluene Towards the 3D Printing of Plastic Scintillators”

Best Oral Talks:

Kelly Truax, University of Hawai’i (MTV), “Image Analysis of Laser Induced Fluorescence in Moss to Determine Optimal Laser Wavelengths for a Portable Design”
Jake Hecla, University of California, Berkeley (NSSC), “Optical property measurements in neutrino detection media”
Ashok Dheenan, The Ohio State University (ETI), “Radiation Tolerant Wide Bandgap Microelectronics”

Best Poster Presentations:

Eric Lepowsky, Princeton University (MTV), “Robotic Inspections in Support of Nuclear Verification”
Kimberly Pestovich, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (NSSC), “Novel high light yield rubidium halide perovskite scintillators”
Samuel Kemp, Georgia Institute of Technology (ETI), “Precomputing Radiation Kernels for Real Time Particle Filter Source Term Estimation in Obstacle Rich Environments”

An optional lab tour was offered to UPR attendees; four University of Michigan MTV labs found on North Campus participated and welcomed the attendees:

Lambda Cubed (Prof. Jovanovic)
DNNG (Prof. Pozzi)
Orion (Prof. He)
Radiation measurements (Prof. Wehe)

MEDIA CONTACT

Courtney Wagoner

Project Manager, Consortium for Monitoring, Technology, and Verification

(734) 763-3668

[email protected]