Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Page 11
Page 12
Page 13
Page 14
Page 15
Page 16
3 Timothy Ault Vanderbilt University Timothy Ault is part of the Nuclear Environmental Engineering group at Vanderbilt University and is working on his PhD under Dr. Steven Krahn. Tims research focuses on the assessment of environmental impacts of nuclear fuel cycles including both low- and high-level radioactive waste resource and radiological impacts. His dissertation topic is a comparison of the environmental impacts from thorium-and uranium-based closed-recycle nuclear fuel cycles which integrates fuel cycle and reactor simulations with environmental metrics. He has also conducted work in the areas of decision analysis and technology readiness assessment for nuclear fuel cycle applications. Tim has authored or co-authored more than twenty journal and conference papers and has also contributed to over a dozen technical reports for organizations including the US DOE Europes OECD-NEA and the Electric Power Research Institute. He has also interned at and collaborated with both Oak Ridge and Idaho National Laboratories. Scholarship Recipients - Graduate Level - 5000 Luke Boast Sheffield University United Kingdom Luke Boast is a third year PhD student at the University of Sheffield working within the Immobilisation Science Laboratory ISL. His research is funded through the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority NDA and focuses on developing an understanding of the waste and matrix interactions during thermal treatment of plutonium contaminated materials PCM found at the Sellafield site UK. Luke is currently working with Kurion Inc. at the Sellafield site providing operational support and assistance with glass formulations for a number of melt trials. Prior to his PhD Luke gained a first class honours degree BEng from Swansea University in Materials Science and Engineering. During which he spent a year working for ALSTOM Switzerland on material related problems mainly in the hot gas path of modern gas turbines. Luke enjoys playing tennis in his free time. Highlights include captaining Swansea University tennis team and representing Sheffield University at the 2014 varsity tournament. Janelle Branch Vanderbilt University Janelle Branch is a doctoral student in Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University with CRESP the Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation where she studies the long-term performance of cementitious materials used in nuclear waste applications. Her research focuses on characterizing the changes in the microstructure solubility of key constituents and reaction of phases in cast stone materials in the presence of reactive gases. Janelle has also conducted research at Tongji University in Shanghai China as part of the National Science Foundation East Asia Pacific Summer Institutes Program. There she characterized a wide variety of components in cast stone including coal combustion fly ash and blast furnace slag. Janelle also serves as a nuclear and civil engineering instructor on the weekend for gifted elementary school children. Previously she earned her M.S. in Environmental Engineering from Vanderbilt University and her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology. Ambar Deshkar Rutgers the State University of New Jersey Ambar Deshkar is a graduate student at Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rutgers University New Jersey. He is originally from Aurangabad India. During high school he was awarded the National Talent Search Scholarship in 2007. In 2013 he obtained his Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani- Hyderabad campus in India. During July 2013-November 2014 he worked as a Graduate Engineer at Aditya Birla Science Technology Company in Mumbai where he worked on development of alumino-silicate based refractory materials from porcelain insulator waste with Dr. Jitendra Kar. Currently into his second year at Rutgers Ambars doctoral research work is focused towards understanding crystallization behavior in high level nuclear waste glasses and its implications on the performance of the final waste form in geological repository.