News

Lauren’s journal paper titled “Bayesian Calibration and Sensitivity Analysis of Rayleigh Scattering Fiber Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing in Water Flow Loop” has been accepted for publication at Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Congratulations to Lauren for winning the “FY 25 Innovations in Nuclear Energy Student Paper Competition Award”. Lauren has been recognized for her work on “Bayesian Calibration of Fiber Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing in Water” in the category of “Reactor Development and Plant Optimization”. See more details at https://neup.inl.gov/announcement/fy-25-innovations-in-nuclear-student-paper-competition-awards-released/

Alie’s journal paper titled “Monte Carlo Dropout Uncertainty Quantification of Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder Anomaly Detection in a Liquid Sodium Cold Trap” has been accepted for publication at Nuclear Technology.

Congratulations to Aidan for being selected for the Nuclear Engineering Student Delegation.

Congratulations to Farah for being selected as the recipient of the 2025-2026 American Nuclear Society (ANS) Graduate Scholarship for $3000.

Congratulations to Lauren for successfully passing her PhD Qualification Exam on “Review of Foundation Models for Scientific Machine Learning Applications”.

Congratulations to Alie for successfully passing her PhD Qualification Exam on “Review of Physics-Informed Diffusion Models”.

Congratulations to Farah for defending her PhD thesis titled “Deep Generative Modeling-based Data Augmentation to Address the Data Scarcity Issue in Nuclear Engineering”

Congratulations to Farah for being selected as the 2025 NCSU College of Engineering Doctoral Scholar of the Year for Scholarly Achievement!

Jason has been selected for the Nuclear Engineering Department Undergraduate Research Excellence Award. Congratulations!

Farah and Aidan’s journal paper titled “Predicting Critical Heat Flux with Uncertainty Quantification and Domain Generalization Using Conditional Variational Autoencoders and Deep Neural Networks” has been accepted for publication by Annals of Nuclear Energy. Congratulations!

The ARTISANS group’s incoming PhD student Jaden Palmer has been selected for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP). Jaden was also awarded the NC State University Provost’s Doctoral Fellowship for 2025-26 and the University Graduate Fellowship.

The NCSU Board of Trustees has approved conferral of Dr. Wu’s tenure at the rank of Associate Professor, effective in August 2025.

Congratulations to Lauren for successfully defending her MS thesis titled “Bayesian Calibration and Machine Learning-based Validation of Distributed Fiber Optic Sensors for Advanced Temperature Sensing in Nuclear Reactors”.

Congratulations to Alie for successfully defending her MS thesis titled “Development of a Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder Anomaly Detection Algorithm for a Liquid Sodium Thermal Hydraulics System”.

Congratulations to Lauren for being selected for the 2025-2026 ANS Vincent J. Esposito Thermal Hydraulic Graduate Scholarship (ANS Thermal-Hydraulcis Division)!

Aidan’s journal article titled “Data-Driven Prediction and Uncertainty Quantification of PWR Crud-Induced Power Shift Using Convolutional Neural Networks” has been accepted for publication in the prestigious journal Energy (Impact Factor 9.0). Congratulations Aidan!

Farah successfully passed her PhD Preliminary Exam with a title “Deep Generative Modeling-based Data Augmentation to Address the Data Scarcity Issue in Nuclear Engineering “. Congratulations Farah!

Ziyu’s paper titled “Hierarchical Bayesian Modeling for Inverse Uncertainty Quantification of System Thermal-Hydraulics Code using Critical Flow Experimental Data” has been accepted for publication at the International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer. Congratulations Ziyu!

Aidan Furlong successfully passed his PhD Qualification Exam part 2 defense. Congratulations Aidan!

Lauren has been selected by the OECD NEA Global Forum Rising Stars Programme. She will present her research work at the NEA Global Forum Rising Stars Workshop 2024 at the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Karlsruhe, Germany on 25-26 November 2024.

Ziyu successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Machine Learning-based Model Discrepancy in Bayesian Inverse Uncertainty Quantification”. Congratulations Ziyu!

Aidan won the 2nd place in the 2024 DOE Cybersecurity and Technology Innovation Conference student poster contest. The title of his poster is “Hybrid and Pure Machine Learning Models in Limited Data Scenarios”, based on his work at ORNL with Dr. Xingang Zhao and Dr. Bob Salko.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA) Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation has awarded $25 million to the “Enabling Capabilities in Technology Consortium” led by the University of Tennessee – Knoxville. Dr. Wu will be a co-PI of this 5-year consortium award along with three other faculty members at NCSU NE Department. See more details at https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/nnsa-awards-50-million-cooperative-agreements-two-university-consortia-support and https://ne.ncsu.edu/news/2024/nc-state-nuclear-engineering-faculty-to-participate-in-university-of-tennessee-knoxville-nnsa-funded-award/

Chris and Sofiia attended the 2024 DOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) University Program Review (UPR) Meeting at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX during June 4-6, 2024. Chris gave a presentation titled “Improving the Quality of Nuclear Data for Radiation Transport Simulations in Nuclear Forensics Applications” as part of the Consortium for Nuclear Forensics (CNF).

PhD students Farah, Alie, and undergraduate student (incoming PhD) Lauren attended the 2024 Best Estimate Plus Uncertainty International Conference (BEPU 2024) at Lucca, Italy during May 19-24, 2024. Five papers from the ARTISANS group were presented: (1) “Uncertainty Quantification of Long Short-Term Memory Autoencoder for Monitoring of Liquid Sodium Cold Trap”, (2) “Bayesian Calibration of Fiber Optic Distributed Temperature Sensing in a Thermal Mixing Tee”, (3) “Uncertainty Quantification and Improved Neural Networks Predictions using Data Augmentation by Variational Autoencoders”, (4) “Hierarchical Bayesian Inverse Uncertainty Quantification with Application to the ATRIUM project”, and (5) “Elucidating the Uncertainties Introduced by Data-Driven Machine Learning Models”.

Chris’s journal article titled “Design Considerations and Monte Carlo Criticality Analysis of Spiral Plate Heat Exchangers for Molten Salt Reactors” has been accepted for publication in Progress in Nuclear Energy.

Lauren has been selected for the 2024-2025 ANS John and Muriel Landis Scholarship! She will receive $5,000 fund support each year for up to five years.

Sofiia has been selected for the American Nuclear Society (ANS) general scholarship.

Dr. Wu has been elected to the Executive Committee of the Thermal Hydraulics Division of the American Nuclear Society (ANS).