News

Congratulations to Mason for being selected as the recipient of the 2026-2027 ANS Undergraduate Scholarship for $2000!

Congratulations to Alie for her selection as the recipient of the 2026-2027 ANS Graduate Scholarship for $3000!

Congratulations to Jason for receiving the NCSU College of Engineering Graduate Merit Award (GMA) during the Summer I 2026 semester.

Chris Brady successfully defended his PhD thesis titled “Nuclear Data Adjustment with Bayesian Inverse UQ for Radiation Transport Simulations in Nuclear Forensics”. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Aidan for receiving the NCSU Nuclear Engineering Department 2025-2026 Graduate Research Excellence Award. Aidan just defended his PhD in March 2026. He finished his PhD in 3.5 years with outstanding research products in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, focusing on the development of physics-informed and hybrid machine learning models for prediction and uncertainty quantification of critical heat flux. He has authored seven peer-reviewed journal articles (five as lead author) and ten peer-reviewed conference papers or extended summaries (eight as lead author).

Congratulations to Oliver for receiving the NCSU Nuclear Engineering Department 2025-2026 Undergraduate Academic Excellence Award. As a Junior student, Oliver has received 24 A+’s and 5 A’s in all the 29 courses he has taken so far.

Congratulations to Jason for receiving the Best Standard Presentation Award in Mathematics, Computation, & AI Applications at the 2026 ANS Student Conference hosted by Texas A&M University. His presentation is titled “Verification Methods for Deploying Trustworthy Large Language Model Systems in Nuclear Operations and Maintenance”.

Congratulations to Jason for receiving the 2025-26 NCSU College of Engineering (CoE) Outstanding Thesis Master’s Student of the Year Award! This is an important recognition of his academic excellence, research productivity, leadership, and commitment to the COE and broader professional community.

ARTISANS’s incoming PhD student Gil Rubia (from Virginia Commonwealth University Nuclear Engineering) has been selected to receive the NC State Provost Doctoral Fellowship and Goodnight Doctoral Fellowship. Gil will join us in Fall 2026 semester. Congratulations and welcome!

Congratulations to Jaden for being selected as a recipient of the 2026-2027 American Nuclear Society (ANS) Reactor Physics Division (RPD) Massimo Salvatores Memoriam Graduate Scholarship.

Congratulations to Aidan for successfully defending his PhD thesis titled “Development, Refinement, and Deployment of Explainable and Interpretable Critical Heat Flux Machine Learning Models”.

The ARTISANS group has been awarded a new Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) project from U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). We will receive $1 million grant between August 2026 – July 2029 to develop “A Comprehensive Uncertainty Quantification Methodology for High Fidelity Multi-Physics Simulation of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors”.

Farah and Alie’s paper titled “Development of Physics-consistent Conditional Diffusion Model to Overcome Data Scarcity in Critical Heat Flux” has been accepted by Energy and AI (Impact Factor 9.6). Congratulations on their first high impact journal publication.

Congratulations to Alie for being selected to receive the John T. McCarter Jr. Graduate Student Fellowship from the NC State Department of Nuclear Engineering.

Our proposal titled “Foundations for CORA (Cognitive Operator Readiness Assistant): Knowledge Graph and Prototype Large Language Model for Nuclear Operator Training” has been selected by the Dean’s College of Engineering Applied AI Research Accelerator Award Program. We will receive $100,000 COE internal grant to establish the technical and data foundations for CORA, a trustworthy AI system that enhances the training of nuclear reactor operators.

Jason’s paper titled “Understanding EV Charging Pain Points Through Deep Learning Analysis” has been selected as an Editor’s Choice Article in World Electric Vehicle Journal (WEVJ). This work was based on Jason’s DOE Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships (SULI) work at Idaho National Laboratory in Summer 2023. This selection highlights outstanding recent publications in the journal and is featured on the Editors’ Choice page: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/wevj/editors_choice

Aidan’s journal paper “Deployment of Traditional and Hybrid Machine Learning for Critical Heat Flux Prediction in the CTF Thermal Hydraulics Code” has been accepted by Nuclear Technology. Congratulations!

Congratulations to Chris for passing his PhD Prelim Exam with the title “Nuclear Data Adjustment with Bayesian Inverse UQ for Radiation Transport Simulations in Nuclear Forensics”!

Congratulations to Aidan for passing his PhD Prelim Exam with the title “Development, Refinement, and Deployment of Explainable and Interpretable Critical Heat Flux Machine Learning Models”!

Chris’s journal paper titled “Nuclear Data Adjustement for Nonlinear Applications in the OECD/NEA WPNCS SG14 Benchmark – A Bayesian Inverse UQ-Based Approach for Data Assimilation” has been accepted for publication by Nuclear Science and Engineering!

Farah has been selected by the OECD NEA Global Forum Rising Stars Programme. She will present her research work at the 2025 NEA Global Forum Rising Stars Workshop at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden from 10-12 December 2025.

Farah’s journal paper titled “An Investigation on Machine Learning Predictive Accuracy Improvement and Uncertainty Reduction using VAE-based Data Augmentation” has been accepted for publication at Nuclear Engineering and Design.

Dr. Wu has been promoted to Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering with tenure.

Our review journal article titled “Uncertainty Quantification for Data-Driven Machine Learning Models in Nuclear Engineering Applications: Where We Are and What Do We Need?” has been accepted for publication by Nuclear Science and Engineering.

Congratulations to Sofiia, Oliver and Evan for being selected for the prestigious DOE University Nuclear Leadership Program (UNLP) Undergraduate Scholarship.

Aidan’s journal paper titled “Physics-Based Hybrid Machine Learning for Critical Heat Flux Prediction with Uncertainty Quantification” has been accepted for publication at Applied Thermal Engineering (Impact Factor 6.9 as of July 2025). Congratulations!

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.