The University Program Review (UPR) 2023 review meeting that was held at the ASUC Student Union: Martin Luther King Junior Building at the UC-Berkeley in Berkeley, CA, June 6 – 8, 2023, which is an opportunity to showcase the DNN R&D-funded research projects from universities and their laboratory partners to the broader nuclear security and nonproliferation community. UPR 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 presenters from the Consortium for Enabling Technologies and Innovation (ETI) delivered excellent oral/poster presentations to our sponsors and the community!

All ETI students’ presentations were very impressive. This year’s UPR Student Award winners are:

• Best Poster Presentation: Hyunsoon Lee (Dr. Siddharth Rajan group, The Ohio State University)
• Best Oral Presentation: Andrew Fishberg (Dr. Jonathan How group, MIT)
• Best National Lab Project: Jordan Stomps (Dr. Paul Wilson group, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Thank the ETI team for your great efforts and contributions to make the UPR2023 successful!

ETI consortium hosted its Annual Workshop at University of Wisconsin-Madison on February 8-9, 2023. About 80 participants representing university partners, national laboratories, and the government joined together to build and strengthen the research collaboration between the labs and the universities. This workshop was a great success with wonderful contributions from the ETI community.

Student presentations (both oral and poster) were impressive and excellent, and this year’s Student Award winners are: 

Allen Wood III (UNC-Chapel Hill) — Best Oral Presentation

Kate Thompson (UW-Madison) — Best Poster Presentation

Congratulations! Professor Anna Erickson has been selected as the new Associate Chair for Research in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Erickson will be responsible for working with the Woodruff School’s faculty to develop a strategic research plan for future growth and investments in the school, as well as identifying new research opportunities, helping to foster strategic relationships with government, industry, and foundations, and synergizing research efforts with other units in the College of Engineering and across the Institute.

NNSA’s Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Research and Development (DNN R&D) held its annual University Program Review (UPR) Meeting from June 7 – June 9, 2022 at the Michigan League at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The UPR 2022 review meeting is an opportunity to showcase the DNN R&D-funded research projects from universities and their laboratory partners to the broader nuclear security and nonproliferation community. Activities included presentations consisting of 54 oral research presentations and 70 posters from different disciplines and topic areas: (1) Data Science, Modeling, and Simulation, (2) Fundamental Science, (3) Detection Technology, (4) Nonproliferation Signatures and Observables.

ETI members successfully presented 19 oral and 22 poster presentations. Three ETI students were awarded best presentation awards:

• Best Oral Presentation: Ashok Dheenan (OSU, advisor: Dr. Siddharth Rajan, “Radiation Tolerant Wide Bandgap Microelectronics“)
• Best Poster Presentation: Samuel Kemp (GT, advisor: Dr. Jonathan Rogers, “Precomputing Radiation Kernels for Real Time Particle Filter Source Term Estimation in Obstacle Rich Environments“) 
• Best National Lab Project Award: Caleb Chandler (CSM, advisor: Dr. Alan Sellinger, “Photoinitiated Cationic Polymerization of Vinyltoluene Towards the 3D Printing of Plastic Scintillators“).

Sarah Mantell, University of California, Santa Barbara

Brief Bio: Sarah Mantell graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo in June 2021. In Fall 2021, she will begin a PhD program at the University of California, Santa Barbara in applied mathematics while continuing her work at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Research and Academic Interests: Sarah’s research interests are widespread and include machine learning, image processing, and cryptography. Sarah’s work at Los Alamos National Laboratory is part of an interdisciplinary project that is studying the relationship between build parameters used in laser powder bed fusion and the resulting material properties. Thus far, Sarah has developed a variety of computer vision tools to analyze melt pools and flag samples that are likely to contain lack-of-fusion defects. Sarah’s mathematical interests include operator theory, low-dimensional topology, and machine learning. Outside of mathematics, she is interested in photography, cross stitching, and cooking.