Andrew Fishberg, an ETI student from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, received the IEEE Transactions on Robotics King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Paper Award for his paper Certifiably Correct Range-Aided SLAM (CORA). This is a major honor in the robotics community — effectively a “best paper of the year” award from one of the field’s top journals. After receiving the award, Andrew highlighted that “I’m deeply appreciative of ETI and all the learning opportunities it has provided. Participating in the consortium has sparked a genuine interest in nuclear non-proliferation — something I never would have anticipated before joining. ETI’s generous support made my contributions to this work possible, and I want to thank everyone again!”

Dr. Steven Biegalski, the ETI Thrust Area Lead of TA2, is receiving the 2025 George Hevesy Medal — the highest international award for career achievements in applied nuclear and radiochemistry.

The medal honors Biegalski’s research and contributions to nuclear analytical chemistry, specifically for “developing comprehensive methods for analyzing radioxenon signatures and creating isotopically pure radioxenon samples, supporting global nuclear monitoring efforts and nuclear accident response.” The medal is sponsored by the Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry with honorees selected by a dedicated panel of scholars overseen by the Board of the Hevesy Award. The award is named after György Hevesy, who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1943 for his work on the use of radionuclides as tracers in the study of chemical processes. Dr. Biegalski will receive the Hevesy Medal in March.

The Consortium for Enabling Technologies and Innovation (ETI) 2.0, a consortium of 12 universities and 12 national labs, which is led by Georgia Tech and directed by Prof. Anna Erickson, wins a $25 million U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) award to support the basic science that underlies the nuclear security and nonproliferation missions.

ETI2.0 links basic university research with applied laboratory research to advance technical capabilities in support of nuclear security and nonproliferation missions of NNSA, enabling an effective pipeline of talented next-generation experts to establish careers at DOE national laboratories. “The consortium is critical to the future of NNSA’s nuclear security and nonproliferation research and development work,” said Jeff Chamberlin, head of NNSA’s nonproliferation efforts. “Once they develop a concept, the national laboratories can iterate and test its capabilities until it’s ready for the private sector to adopt.” (check here more details)

ETI2.0 will leverage the strong foundation of interdisciplinary, collaboration-driven technological innovation developed in the ETI Consortium funded in 2019. The technical mission of the ETI 2.0 team is to advance technologies across three core disciplines: data science and digital technologies in nuclear security and nonproliferation, precision environmental analysis for enhanced nuclear nonproliferation vigilance and emergency response, and emerging technologies. They will be advanced by research projects in novel radiation detectors, algorithms, testbeds, and digital twins.

While half the original collaborators remain, ETI2.0 sought new institutional partners for their research expertise, including Abilene Christian University, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Stony Brook University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Virginia Commonwealth University. Other university collaborators include the Colorado School of Mines, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Ohio State University, Texas A&M University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. National lab partners are the Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Nevada National Security Site, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and Savannah River National Laboratory. (more details are available here)

The ETI members showcased the research progress by delivering impressive 16 oral presentations and 25 poster presentations at the annual University Program Review (UPR) meeting that was held by NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D) from June 4 – 6, 2024 at the Zachry Engineering Education Complex at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Over 260 participants representing university partners, national laboratories, and the government joined together at this event.

The UPR meeting is an unclassified venue for sponsors to review the accomplishments of grantees; stakeholders within the community to engage sponsored researchers; a forum to stimulate collaboration, technology transfer, and integration; and a venue where students and early career scientists can interact with their peers in a rigorous, yet collegial, environment.

All the students’ presentations are very impressive. This year’s UPR Student Award winners for our ETI consortium are:

• Best Poster Presentation: Andrew Fishberg (Dr. Jonathan How group, MIT)
• Best Oral Presentation: Avery Nguyen (Dr. Michael Short group, MIT)
• Best National Lab Project: Sarah Scott (Dr. David Carlson group, Duke University)

Great efforts and contributions from the ETI members to make the UPR2024 successful! Special thanks to Dr. Pavel Tsvetkov and the TAMU team for hosting and supporting this meeting! 

Prof. Anna Erickson, the director of ETI consortium, was awarded the E. Gail de Planque Medal at the 2023 ANS Winter Conference. The award recognizes exemplary accomplishments by a woman in the fields of nuclear science and engineering. This award is intended to recognize outstanding lifetime or singular achievements by women that have resulted in tangible benefits to the field of nuclear science and engineering. The award is to be given to a woman whose work in the field of engineering, education, research or public policy meets one or more of the following criteria:

• Outstanding technical leadership for work performed in her subject area (e.g., establishing a new curriculum)
• Leader of a major research, design, construction, or operations effort
• Accomplishment in the field of public policy affecting nuclear science and technology.