News 2026
8/11/26 - Congratulations, Bao-Phong!
Congratulations to Bao-Phong! His paper, "TEM characterization of two variants of fuel-cladding chemical interaction in a HT-9 clad U-10Zr fuel. Variant 2: FCCI without a Zr rind," has been accepted for publication in Journal of Nuclear Materials. The study uses TEM and atom probe tomography to resolve six distinct reaction layers at the fuel-cladding interface and examines FCCI in the absence of the Zr-rich rind observed in the companion study.
8/7/26 - Congratulations, Dr. Mika!
Mitch Mika officially graduated with his Ph.D. and is heading to Idaho National Laboratory, where he will join INL as a Distinguished Postdoctoral Research Associate. Congratulations, Mitch, and best wishes for this next chapter!
7/27/26 - Congratulations, Sadie!
Congratulations to Sadie Wicks on receiving an award for her proposal through the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (CINT). Her proposal, Understanding the Mechanisms behind Irradiation-Induced Grain Subdivision (2026A0222), was selected for funding.
We look forward to the exciting discoveries that will come from this work.
7/22/26 - Congratulations, Mary and Sadie!
Congratulations to Mary Sevart and Sadie Wicks on their success in the 2026 NSUF Rapid Turnaround Experiment (RTE) program. Their proposals were selected from a highly competitive pool of 41 submissions.
Mary was awarded two RTEs:
Evaluation of the Mechanical Properties of Phases in an Annular U-10Zr Irradiated Fuel (#26-5661)
Evaluation of Interconnected Porosity in an Irradiated Annular U-10Zr Fuel (#26-5654)
Sadie was awarded one RTE:
Identifying the Roles of Irradiation and Stress in Dislocation-Mediated Grain Subdivision (#26-5666)
Congratulations to both on this outstanding accomplishment. We look forward to seeing the results of these projects.
5/28/26 - Congratulations, Mitch!
Congratulations to Mitch Mika for successfully passing his PhD thesis defense. We wish you all the best in the next chapter of your career, Dr. Mika!
4/23/26 - Upcoming talks at the 2026 MRS Spring Meeting
Catch up with our research at the upcoming 2026 MRS Spring Meeting and Exhibit in Honolulu (April 26-May 1):
Jack is presenting "Mapping Decomposition Pathway of Uranyl Oxalate to Uranium Oxide" on April 29 at 2:15pm
Mary is presenting "Comparison of Constituent Redistribution Mechanisms in U-Zr Based Fuels Using EDS and EPMA" on April 28 at 5:30pm
4/16/26 - Mitch publishes a paper on U-Pu-Zr fuel
Congratulations to Mitch, whose paper "Plutonium Migration and Phase Evolution in Irradiated U-Pu-Zr Metallic Fuels: An Integrated EPMA-SEM-TEM Study" has been published in Journal of Nuclear Materials. This work presents a detailed post-irradiation examination of a high burnup U-19Pu-6Zr fuel pin, in which we show that Pu migrates with Zr, contradicting the long-standing assumption of Pu immobility, and reveal strong asymmetries in fission product distributions.
3/29/26 - Sadie's first paper is out
Congratulations to Sadie, whose paper "Cascade-informed accelerated simulation of complex defect structures in irradiated aluminum using iterative kinetic approach" has been published in Materials Letters. This paper is led by Alhassan Issaka, and is a collaboration with Profs. Tonks and Phillpot for the BES project on high burnup structure formation mechanisms. In this paper, we introduce a new molecular dynamics method for characterizing radiation damage.
3/23/26 - Mitch publishes a paper on U-Zr fuel
Congratulations to Mitch, whose paper "FIB-ToF-SIMS characterization of irradiated U-10Zr" has been published in Materials Characterization. In this paper, we use a combination of SIMS and ML to spatially resolve closed fission gas bubbles in 3D to shed light on the complexity of the constituent redistribution in these metallic fuels.
2/5/26 - New paper alert
Check out the new paper "Computational design of materials for nuclear reactors" that has been published in npj | computational materials. This paper is a collaboration with Drs Tonks from UF and Andersson from LANL, and serves as a review of how ICME concepts can be used to accelerate development and qualification of nuclear materials.
1/28/26 - Mary's first paper is out
Congratulations to Mary, whose paper "Modern Measurement of Local Radial Thermal Conductivity of Irradiated He-Bonded U-10 wt. % Zr Annular Fuel: A cross-correlative study with electron probe microanalysis techniques" has been published in Journal of Nuclear Materials. This paper is a collaboration with INL, where we investigate thermal conductivity of irradiated annual U-Zr fuels.
1/21/26 - Brandon is awarded a NSUF Super RTE
Congratulations to Brandon for receiving Nuclear Science User Facilities (NSUF) super rapid turnaround experiment (RTE) funding! Super RTE awards facilitate the advancement of nuclear science and technology by providing nuclear energy researchers with timely access to irradiation testing, post-irradiation examination and technical expertise provided through NSUF at no cost to the researchers. Brandon's proposal "Effect of in situ Straining on Irradiation Induced Hardening in RPV Steel" is 1 of 18 proposals that have been selected for an award. Well done, Brandon!
1/12/26 - New paper alert
The results of our collaboration with LLNL, "Predicting U3O8 powder processing conditions: An AI/ML approach analyzing deep learning embeddings of SEM micrographs" have been published in Journal of Alloys and Compounds. This is our first paper on nuclear forensics, stay tuned for more.
1/2/26 - Mitch develops a new tool for automating porosity measurements
Congratulations to Mitch, whose paper "RAFT: A Program for Area Fraction Measurement of Digital Micrographs" has been published in Micron. If you are working on porosity quantification, Mitch has developed a new open-source software that can help you automate the process. It's free and available via GitHub.