February 23, 2022
Anthony J. Konecni is a current Berkeley MEng student studying Nuclear Engineering (NE). Here he shares his experience as a full-time US Coast Guard Reservist and his passion about energy and clean nuclear power. [read more]
April 28, 2022
On April 28, fifteen members of the van Bibber research group created an exhibition on the search for dark matter at the popular Thursday evening series “The Exploratorium After Dark” in San Francisco. The group’s research, the evidence for dark matter and experimental search strategies were on display via multiple plasma screens, posters, and hands-on demonstrations of the microwave technology employed in their experiments looking for the axion. Group alumna Maria Simanovskaia, currently a postdoc at Stanford University, gave one of two lectures during the evening on her own work hunting for dark matter. As one of the first in person events after the pandemic, the evening was a great success, drawing more than 900 attendees
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!
February 10th, 2022
The Brimacomb award award recognizes Professor Hosemann for his sustained excellence and achievements in materials science and engineering, and his record of continuing service to the profession. He received this award specifically for his contribution to micro and macroscale mechanical testing of irradiated materials and in-situ materials testing and continued dedication to TMS and education. Professor Hosemann is a dedicated member to the Minerals, Metals and Materials society which is also a professional home of a wide range of nuclear materials topics.........More Info about the award
The formal presentation of the award will be at the TMS-AIME Annual Awards Ceremony on Wednesday, March 3, during the TMS 2022 Annual Meeting in Anaheim, California.
Congratulations Professor and Chair Peter Hosemann!
October 21, 2021
Prof. Abergel had an article published in The Berkeleyan titled Removing a potential MRI risk - literally.
"The first use of MRI to scan a patient’s body was in 1977. Today, more than 40 million MRI scans are carried out every year in the U.S. In about one out of three, patients get an infusion containing the metal gadolinium as a contrast agent to improve imaging.
But over the last 10 to 15 years, physicians have increasingly reported that contrast MRIs sometimes lead to potentially life-threatening complications, particularly in patients with certain types of kidney disease. The FDA issued a warning against contrast MRIs for patients with kidney disease." [read more]
Congratulations Professor Abergel
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 3rd, 2021
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.
August 25th, 2021
Professor Raluca Scarlat has been awarded the 2021 American Nuclear Society's Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women’s Achievement Award.
The American Nuclear Society's Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women’s Achievement Award recognizes the outstanding personal dedication and technical achievement by a woman for work she has performed in the fields of nuclear science, engineering, research or education.
Find out more about the Mary Jane Oestmann Professional Women’s Achievement Award here https://www.ans.org/honors/award-oestmann/.
Congratulations Professor Scarlat!
August 21st, 2021
On August 18, Kairos Power welcomed U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Jennifer M. Granholm and Senator Martin Heinrich at their KP-Southwest testing and manufacturing center in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They were given a tour of the facilities following the Senate passage of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act – a historic piece of legislation that includes investments in clean energy.
On their LinkedIn page they wrote
"We are grateful to be among community members, local leaders, and organizations whose efforts are recognized as positively supporting New Mexico’s clean energy transition and the nation’s decarbonization goals... We would like to extend gratitude to our KP-Southwest team members who worked with flexibility and grace this week to enable a very successful and exciting tour of our facilities."
Kairos currently has over 200 full-time team members and expect to creat at least 65 more high-skilled and high-paying jobs in Albuquerque to support major hardware demonstrations.
Later that week, DOE Secretary Granholm also paid the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) a visit. Kairos' Co-Founder and Chief Nuclear Officer, Professor Per Peterson (UC Berkeley, LBNL) commented, "It’s excellent to have strong policy support for clean energy including nuclear."
Similarly, the department celebrates this step towards more clean energy!
August 18, 2021
On Aug. 8, 2021, an experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s (LLNL’s) National Ignition Facility (NIF) made a significant step toward ignition, achieving a yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ). This advancement puts researchers at the threshold of fusion ignition, an important goal of the NIF, and opens access to a new experimental regime.
The experiment was enabled by focusing laser light from NIF — the size of three football fields — onto a target the size of a BB that produces a hot-spot the diameter of a human hair, generating more than 10 quadrillion watts of fusion power for 100 trillionths of a second.
While a full scientific interpretation of these results will occur through the peer-reviewed journal/conference process, initial analysis shows an 8X improvement over experiments conducted in spring 2021 and a 25X increase over NIF’s 2018 record yield.
“These extraordinary results from NIF advance the science that NNSA depends on to modernize our nuclear weapons and production as well as open new avenues of research,” said Jill Hruby, DOE undersecretary for Nuclear Security and NNSA administrator.
Read more about this significant feat here.
Mark Herrmann, LLNL’s deputy program director for Fundamental Weapons Physics reminds us:
“This significant advance was only made possible by the sustained support, dedication and hard work of a very large team over many decades, including those who have supported the effort at LLNL, industry and academic partners and our collaborators at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, the University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics and General Atomics... This result builds on the work and successes of the entire team, including the people who pursued inertial confinement fusion from the earliest days of our Laboratory. They should also share in the excitement of this success.”
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