Dr. Sukesh Aghara, a professor at Prairie View A&M University, and two of his students spent the summer of 2005 at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) as participants in the Faculty and Student Team (FaST) program, administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education for DOE and the National Science Foundation. The students were Eric Wright of Austin and Jerrad Deason of Houston.
Aghara says the experience will be the catalyst needed to accelerate the development of Prairie View’s nuclear engineering program.
“Participation in this program provided the perfect combination of time, resources, and surroundings to jump-start nuclear-related research at Prairie View,” explained Aghara.
“Our nuclear engineering program is in its infancy. As such, the limited research opportunities have provided little motivation to the students to pursue careers in research and development.”
That’s no longer the case for Prairie View undergraduates Wright and Deason. They traveled from the university to join Aghara in ORNL’s Nuclear Science and Technology Division for 10 weeks of research, networking, and camaraderie with fellow students, faculty, and researchers from across the nation.
The Prairie View team collaborated with ORNL mentor Jeffrey Johnson to benchmark secondary neutron production from two radiation transport codes against experimental data reported in a peer-reviewed journal.
These codes – Monte Carlo N-Particle eXtended (MCNPX) and Particle and Heavy-Ion Transport System (PHITS) – are relatively new in their application to the study of heavy ion transport in the space and high energy physics arena; however, they show promise for the characterization of high energy charged particle interactions and heavy ion transport design studies.
In particular, the ORNL work supports projectile-target analysis for the Spallation Neutron Source and the proposed Rare Isotope Accelerator projects.
Both Wright and Deason commented that the experience, while exposing them to research and development as well as the culture of a national laboratory, has solidified their commitment to pursue master’s degrees in nuclear engineering.
The daily interactions with scientists, engineers, and other research participants were also enriching.
“The opportunity to work beside Ph.D. researchers from around the globe – all of whom are so enthusiastic to teach the next generation of scientists – as well as the organized outings with other students, created a stimulating learning environment,” Deason said.
“This experience has allowed me to build a network of friends, advisors, and mentors who are from different cultures and involved in different fields of applied sciences,” Wright agreed.
“It has been a very positive learning experience,” he said. “The program has exceeded all of my expectations.