Alumni News

October 6, 2023October 6, 2023

Gamma Reality, Inc: DOE and ANS Articles Spotlight Startup Founded by Kai Vetter and UCBNE Alumni Andy Haefner and Ryan Pavlovsky

October 6, 2023

Logo courtesy of Gamma Reality, Inc.

UCBNE alumni Andy Haefner and Ryan Pavlovsky, alongside professor Kai Vetter, have worked to develop and commercialize real-time, 3D radiation mapping instruments through their work at LBNL and startup Gamma Reality, Inc. Their scene-data fusion enabled instruments have been increasingly adopted by nuclear power plants across the US, Canada, and Switzerland.

Learn more about the creation of Gamma Reality, Inc. in the full DOE article, and the applications of its technologies in the full ANS article.

December 2, 2022

UCBNE Alum Joey Kabel named on Forbes 30 under 30

December 1st, 2022

UC Berkeley Nuclear Engineering alum Joey Kabel (MS '17, PhD '20) has been named on the 2022 Forbes 30 under 30 - Energy list for his work with startup Electrified Thermal.

"At Electrified Thermal, Kabel is on a mission to decarbonize industry with renewable heat. The startup is building the Joule Hive thermal battery: an energy storage technology that converts and stores cheap, renewable electricity as high-temperature heat. Its patented technology revolutionizes the durability of affordable electric heating to deliver flame-temperatures to any process. It has raised $5.5 million in funding from government and venture capital sources since incorporating in April 2021." (Forbes)

September 9, 2022September 9, 2022

Graduate Student Sarah Stevenson Awarded ANS Congressional Fellowship

September 8th, 2022

UCBNE Ph.D. candidate Sarah Stevenson has been selected for the 2023 ANS Glenn T. Seaborg Congressional Science and Engineering Fellowship. For the first time in the history of the fellowship, two memebrs have been chosen, Stevenson alongside GE-Hitach Joseph Orellana.

Harsh S. Desai, chair of the ANS Congressional Fellowship Committee and a former Congressional Fellow says "With two Fellows on the Hill next year, ANS will be in a unique position to provide significant technical assistance to the U.S. Congress on nuclear science, energy, and technology . With the increased focus on clean energy deployment and ensuring domestic energy security in Washington, D.C., Stevenson and Orellana’s different perspectives from their industry, academia, and national lab experiences will be invaluable."

Further coverage can be found here.

April 14, 2022July 13, 2022

Kairos Power receives 2022 BloombergNEF Pioneer Award

April 14th, 2022

BloombergNEF has announced its twelve winners of the 2022 BNEF Pioneers program, including Department of Nuclear Engineering professor Per Peterson and alumni Mike Laufer and their team at Kairos Power. Kairos Power was recognized for its "novel advanced nuclear reactor technology to complement renewable energy sources". For over a decade, this program has sought to identify and highlight technological innovations that accelerate global decarbonization and halt climate change.

You can read more about this achievement here.

April 12, 2022July 15, 2022

UCBNE CUORE Collaboration and the Search for Matter

April 6th, 2022

"Search for Majorana neutrinos exploiting millikelvin cryogenics with CUORE" has been published in Nature. The Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE, Italian for “heart”) is one of several next generation neutrinoless double-beta decay (0νββ) experiments. Affilated with the published article include those from the UC Berkeley Department of Physics, the Nuclear Science Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Engineering Divison of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as well as the UC Berkeley Department of Nuclear Engineering.

The link to the article can be found here. And further coverage of the article can be found here.

April 5, 2022April 12, 2022

Raluca Scarlat Selected for U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Advisory Team

Raluca Scarlat Selected for U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Advisory Team

February 9th, 2022

Raluca Scarlat is among eleven members named to the Department of Energy's Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee, which advises the secretary and the assistant secretary for nuclear energy on current priorities in the department's programs. "A change in the structure and focus in NEAC will help DOE act more quickly and effectively to research advances in nuclear power to meet the nation's energy, environmental, and national security needs,” said Andy Griffith, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Supply Chain. NEAC is structured to provide input from multiple perspectives, with Raluca Scarlat representing the university perspective.

Raluca Scarlat is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, heads the SALT Laboratory at University of California Berkeley, and is the recipient of the ANS Mary Jane Oestmann Award. Professor Scarlat has expertise in high temperature chemistry and materials for advanced reactors, reactor design and safety analysis, and engineering ethics.

February 18, 2022February 18, 2022

Hi Vo, our former grad student and NSSC fellow awarded a LANL directors funded post doc.

February 11th, 2022

Across all divisions, the LANL postdocs went through a competitive process in order to be selected for the fellowship based on previous research merit and the strength of the postdoc research proposal.
Director Postdoc fellowship provides full, 2/3, 1/3 funding for each subsequent year to support Hi Vo's research proposal.
Hi Vo's Director funded research proposal is on the exploration of unit and collective plastic deformation processes using in situ 4DSTEM mechanical testing and 3D-EBSD.

Congratulations Hi Vo! What a wonderful achievement!

January 18, 2022April 5, 2022

With great sadness of the passing of Hans Mark

January 5th, 2022

Portrait of DoD Mr. Mark Hans Director, Defense Research and Engineering (U.S. Army photo by Mr. Scott Davis) (Released) (PC-193032)

Hans Mark, who served as chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and administrator of the Berkeley Research Reactor from 1964 to 1969, died Saturday, Dec. 18, at the age of 92. Mark was a giant in his field, serving as NASA Deputy Administrator, Secretary of the Air Force, Director of Defense Research and Engineering in the Department of Defense, and Chancellor of the University of Texas system. He was a Berkeley alum and a long-time benefactor of the department. Read more about his remarkable life and work here.

November 4, 2021November 8, 2021

UCBNE Graduate Student Jaewon Lee Wins 3rd Place at IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference

November 3 , 2021

UCBNE graduate student Jaewon Lee won 3rd place in the student competition of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference that took place on October 16th-23rd, 2021.

His submission, "Single Detector 3D Source Imaging Using a Kullback-Leibler Divergence Based Prior", improves the ability in the localization and mapping of radioactive materials in three dimensions in unconstrained environments overcoming challenges in conventional approaches.

In addition to Jaewon's presentation, eight other students of the Berkeley Applied Nuclear Physics program gave presentations: Kalie Knecht, Yifan Zheng, Ivan Cho, Jake Hecla, Robin Peter, Chris Lamb, Matt Marshall, and Michael Bondin.

Read more about the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference here.

Congratulations Jaewon!

September 15, 2021

Three UCBNE Alumni Receive NSSC Awards

September 3rd, 2021

From Left to Right: Hi Vo, Kelly Kmak, Mark Straub

Three UCBNE alumni have been awarded the 2021 Nuclear Science and Security Consortium's Awards for Outstanding Publication and Outstanding Thesis.

Mark Straub (PhD in Chemistry awarded May 14, 2021) won for Best Reviewed Publication with "Recent Advances in Nuclear Forensic Chemistry", which was featured as a cover article in a special issue of Analytical Chemistry. Read more about this article here.

Kelly Kmak (PhD awarded May 14, 2021) won for Outstanding Thesis for Radiochemistry and Forensics with “Investigation of the 230Th(p,2n)229Pa Reaction as a Route to 225Ac”.

Hi Vo (PhD awarded May 14, 2021) won for Outstanding Thesis for Nuclear Engineering with “Influence of Defects’ Mechanical Stability on Microscale Plasticity and Failure”.

The NSSC Outstanding Publication Award is awarded annually by the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium to the lead author(s) of an outstanding peer-reviewed paper published in the areas of basic and applied science and engineering supporting the nation’s nuclear security and nonproliferation mission.

The NSSC Outstanding Thesis Award is awarded annually by the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium to scholars who have completed an exceptional thesis in the areas of basic and applied science and engineering supporting the nation’s nuclear security and nonproliferation mission.

These highly competitive awards honor NSSC Fellows and Affiliates for their excellent contributions to nuclear security science.