Research Funding

The Nuclear Engineering program at Pitt has attracted more than $6 million in funding to the University of Pittsburgh (DOE, ARPA-E, NRC, and Industry). Pitt ranks among the top ten American universities in terms of the federal research support competitively attracted by members of our faculty. 

Nikhil Bajaj, Assistant Professor

  • Development of High-Temperature Capable Resonant Sensors and Data Science-Enabled Sensor Design and Integration for Nuclear Systems

Heng Ban, R.K. Mellon Professor

  • Disruptive Nuclear Technology: Resonance Sensors and Inductive Signal Transmission through Hermetic Walls 
  • Preparatory Out-of-pile Lead Loop Experiments to Support Design of Irradiation Test Loop in VTR
  • Transient Reactor (TREAT) Experiments to Validate MBM Fuel Performance Simulations
  • Development of Fiber-Optic Thermodynamic State Measurement Systems 

Kevin P. Chen, Paul E. Lego Professor

  • Advanced Manufacturing of Embedded Heat Pipe Nuclear Hybrid Reactor
  • eVinci Micro Reactor
  • Radiation-Harden Optical Fiber Sensor Fused Smart Alloy Parts with Graded Alloy Composition Enabled by Additive Manufacturing Processes 

Daniel Cole, Associate Professor

  • Advanced l&C for Fault-Tolerant Supervisory Control of Small Modular Reactors
  • Pitt Nuclear Engineering Faculty Development Grant
  • Pitt Nuclear Engineering Graduate Fellowship Program

Katherine Hornbostel, Assistant Professor

  • Modeles on containment surfaces in Small Modular Reactors
  • System modeling of nuclear power plant hybrids with direct air capture

Paul Ohodnicki, Associate Professor and Kevin Chen, Paul E. Lego Professor

  • Distributed acoustic fiber optic sensing with physics-based modeling and AI-based classification to enable real-time non-intrusive monitoring of nuclear waste dry cask storage systems

Albert To, Associate Professor and Wei Xiong, Assistant Professor

  • Integrating Dissolvable Supports, Topology Optimization, and Microstructure Design to Drastically Reduce Costs in Developing and Post-Processing Nuclear Plant Components Produced by Laser-based Powder Bed Additive Manufacturing