The Consortium for Verification Technology (CVT), consists of thirteen leading universities and nine national laboratories, working together to provide the research and development and human capital needed to address technology and policy issues in treaty-compliance monitoring. The underlying issues include nuclear nonproliferation and safeguards in support of the mission of the NNSA’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development office. In this presentation, I will describe the major gaps and emerging challenges in treaty verification that the CVT will address in six thrust areas: (i) treaty verification: characterizing existing gaps and emerging challenges, (ii) fundamental data and techniques, (iii) advanced safeguards tools for accessible facilities, (iv) detection of undeclared activities and inaccessible facilities, (v) disarmament verification, and (vi) education and outreach.
Over the next five years, the CVT will deliver new instruments and methods for nuclear nonproliferation, safeguards, and arms control treaty verification. We will educate more than 60 Bachelors, Masters, and Ph. D. students with the talent, training, and commitment to meet the current and emerging challenges in this field. These graduates will have strong ties to the national laboratory system thanks to the collaborative research projects in which they will be engaged.
Professor Sara Pozzi earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in nuclear engineering at the Polytechnic of Milan, Italy in 1997 and 2001, respectively. Following her doctorate, she spent six years as a staff scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where she most recently held the position of Senior Staff. In 2007, she joined the Department of Nuclear and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan where she established and is the leader of the Detection for Nuclear Nonproliferation Group (DNNG). Her research interests include the development of new methods for nuclear materials detection, identification, and characterization for nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear material control and accountability, nuclear safeguards, and national security programs.
Prof. Pozzi is the director of the Consortium for Verification Technology, a consortium of 13 universities and 9 national laboratories dedicated to the development of new technologies for nuclear treaty verification. She is the co-author of the Monte Carlo code MCNPX-PoliMi, which is being used at over 50 institutions world-wide. Her publication record includes over 300 papers in journals and international conference proceedings. She was invited to give over 50 seminars, both nationally and internationally. As the DNNG leader, she advises 14 doctoral students and many undergraduate students, and is the faculty advisor for the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) student chapter.
She is the recipient of many awards, including the 2006 Oak Ridge National Laboratory Early Career Award, 2006 Department of Energy, Office of Science, Outstanding Mentor Award, 2009 INMM Central Region Chapter, Special Service Award, 2012 INMM Edway R. Johnson Meritorious Service Award, and 2012 UM Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences Department, Outstanding Achievement Award.
