2025 [01-15-2025]: Dr. Wu is invited to serve as Associate Editor for the established technical journal in the nuclear engineering field – Annals of Nuclear Energy! 2024 [11-10-2024]: Dr. Wu starts to serve as the Chair of the Technical Program Committee for the Reactor Physics Division (RPD) in American Nuclear Society (ANS). In this role, Dr. Wu is responsible for surveilling technical papers and developing technical programs for the ANS National Conferences as well as RPD sponsored topical meetings such as PHYSOR. [10-12-2024]: FHR (Fluoride-salt High-temperature Reactor) is an innovative advanced nuclear reactor concept proposed lately to achieve both inherent safety and high thermal efficiency in reactor operations. The collaborative reactor physics benchmark development for FHR has been ongoing for over 5 years. Recently we have the FHR Phase-I calculation results published by OECD/NEA, which is considered as a great milestone to the project. Big congratulations to the team! [08-02-2024]: Kashminder Mehta successfully passed his Ph.D. proposal defense (prelim) entitled “Advanced Multiphysics Modeling of Neutronic and Thermal Behaviors in the Pebble Bed High-Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactors”. Congratulations, Kashminder! [06-20-2024]: VCU’s nuclear engineering graduate program ranked No. 18 in U.S. News and World Report rankings. Congratulations! [05-15-2024]: Mohamed Elhareef is awarded the 2024-2025 ANS John and Muriel Landis Scholarship for his excellent academic performance achieved at the nuclear engineering program at VCU. Congratulations! [04-19-2024]: Dr. Wu presents the latest research progress on the MSRE transient benchmark development (PDF) at the IRPhEP Technical Review Meeting organized by OECD/NEA and hosted at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in the United States. (Media news online). [04-15-2024]: Dr. Wu will participate in two DOE NEUP awarded projects starting August 2024! One is teamed up with VCU’s own Dr. Braden Goddard on the project titled ‘Development of a Benchmark Model for the Near Real-Time Radionuclide Composition Measurement System using Microcalorimetry for Advanced Reactors’ (project abstract); another one is led by Dr. Yunfei Zhao from University of Maryland on the project titled ‘Improving the computational efficiency and usability of dynamic PRA with reinforcement learning’ (project abstract). Congratulations! [04-08-2024]: Justin Shurie is awarded the prestigious UNLP fellowship for the fiscal year 2023. Congratulations! [04-06-2024]: Ben Impson has won the best oral presentation award at the 2024 ANS student conference held at Penn State University April 4–6, 2024. Excellent job! 2023 [12-18-2023]: Good News! Our recent paper titled “A Consistent One-Dimensional Multigroup Diffusion Model for Molten Salt Reactor Neutronics Calculations” published in the Journal of Nuclear Engineering has been selected and highlighted with a cover story in the cover page of the issue, which is certainly an indication of significance and importance of this work. [12-04-2023]: Mohamed Elhareef successfully passed his Ph.D. proposal defense (prelim) entitled ‘Molten Salt Reactor Experiment Reactor Physics Transient Benchmark Development and Evaluation’. Congratulations, Mohamed! [08-22-2023]: Dr. Tao Liu has left VCU and joined the Regulatory Support Department at Idaho National Laboratory as a full time Probabilistic Risk and Reliability Analyst! This is a great opportunity, congratulations, Tao! [08-01-2023]: Great News! Dr. Wu, teaming up with VCU’s own nuclear engineering professors Dr. Supathorn Phongikaroon (PI), Dr. Braden Goddard, Dr. Jessika Rojas, Dr. Lane Carasik, and other professors from Virginia Union University & Virginia State University, has been awarded $1.5 M from the US DOE NEUP to work together on an Integral Research Project (IRP) to address the Grand Challenge Research and Development at Minority Serving Institutions, with the primary aim to establish a research, education, and training Center of Excellence to bring together in-depth expertise on nuclear fuel cycle and waste management to support our future advanced reactor designs. The technical abstract of this project can be found here. Congratulations! [07-01-2023]: Good News! Dr. Wu is recently promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure at the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering in Virginia Commonwealth University. Congratulations! [05-03-2023]: Great News! Tao Liu successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation by receiving unanimous passes from all his Ph.D. committee members. Congratulations, Dr. Liu! [04-17-2023]: Good News! Dr. Wu is elected to the Executive Committee of the Reactor Physics Division (RPD) for the American Nuclear Society (ANS). Dr. Wu’s three-year term as Executive Member of RPD will begin at the conclusion of the Division’s Executive Committee meeting in Indianapolis, IN at June 2023! [2-24-2023]: Mohamed Elhareef has received the results of his Ph.D. qualifier exams with unanimously passes in all subjects (solids, fluids, materials, and nuclear). Excellent job, big congratulations, Mohamed! 2022 [12-01-2022]: Yue Zou successfully passed his Ph.D. proposal defense (prelim). Congratulations, Yue! [06-17-2022]: Dr. Wu, teaming up with VCU’s own professor Dr. Goddard and other scientists from ANL, BNL, and ORNL, has been awarded $400 K from the US DOE NEUP to work together on a research project with the purpose of creating a Pebble Database for Material Control and Accountancy in Pebble Bed Reactors. A media news informs the interesting part of this research. The technical abstract of this project can be found here. Congratulations! [06-13-2022]: Dr. Wu was invited to participate in a panel discussion on the “Current Issues in Computational Methods” at the 2022 ANS Annual Meeting hold at Anaheim CA. He delivered a short presentation short presentation in the panel on the computational issues from the reactor physicist perspective. [05-09-2022]: Tao Liu successfully passed his Ph.D. proposal defense (prelim). Congratulations, Tao! [04-25-2022]: Good News! Dr. Wu is elected to the Executive Committee of the Mathematics and Computation Division (MCD) for the American Nuclear Society (ANS). Dr. Wu’s three-year term as Executive Member of MCD will begin at the conclusion of the Division’s Executive Committee meeting in Anaheim, California, June 2022! [01-16-2022]: Mr. Mohamed Elhareef has joined the CARPL group as a PhD student starting in January 2022. Mohamed got his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Department at Alexandria University, Egypt. Welcome, Mohamed! [01-06-2022]: Good News! One of our latest journal papers titled “Neural Network Based Deep Learning Method for Multi-Dimensional Neutron Diffusion Problems with Novel Treatment to Boundary” published in the Journal of Nuclear Engineering has been recently selected and highlighted in the front page of the journal. What a pleasant surprise! This paper is a non-funded collaborative research outcome with researchers from the Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, China. 2021 [12-13-2021]: Dr. Cihang Lu will soon leave us and join the Nuclear Science & Technology Department at the Brookhaven National Laboratory as a full time assistant nuclear engineer. Congratulations, Cihang! [06-22-2021]: Dr. Wu is awarded $400 K from the US DOE NEUP to develop and evaluate a reactor physics transient benchmark for the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) reactor. A media story tells the interesting part of this work. The technical abstract of this project can be found here. [06-01-2021]: Teddy Chu starts his summer intern (Research Aid) with the Argonne National Laboratory. Congratulations, Teddy! [05-15-2021]: Tao Liu starts his summer intern with the Idaho National Laboratory. Congratulations, Tao! [04-24-2021]: Dr. Wu was invited to serve as the Advisory Editor in the Editorial Board of the journal – Annals of Nuclear Energy ! [04-10-2021]: Tao Liu’s conference paper “Adjoint Solution of Time-dependent Multigroup Diffusion Model with Generalized Temporal and Spatial Boundary Conditions” is awarded as the Best Paper in the track of Reactor Physics at the 2021 ANS Student Conference hold virtually at the North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC. Congratulations, Tao! 2020 [12-19-2020]: Dr. Wu was invited to serve for the Editorial Advisor Board for the ANS sponsored technical journal – Nuclear Technology ! [12-08-2020]: Dr. Wu is teaming up with the experts from University of Maryland, Idaho National Laboratory and Westinghouse Electric Company to work on a US DOE sponsored NEUP project to assess the natural hazard risks to nuclear facilities. The abstract of this project can be found here. [11-22-2020]: Liam Carlson’s ANS meeting talk on the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) estimation on HALEU (high-assay low-enriched uranium) fuels for small modular reactors is advocated by ANS Newswire “2020 ANS Virtual Winter Meeting: Advanced nuclear reactors and power systems“. Liam’s ANS summary and presentation can be downloaded from No. 60 in the publication page [11-15-2020]: Dr. Wu is featured in the article “Nuclear News Asks: Who Inspired You?” published in the November issue of the ANS Nuclear News. [09-30-2020]: Tao Liu’s conference paper “Sensitivity and Uncertainty Information Incorporated Loss of Flow Accident Analyses for Research Reactors” was selected as the Best Video Presentation Award by the International Conference of Nuclear Engineering 2020. Congratulations, Tao! [08-31-2020]: Yue Zou successfully passed his Ph.D. qualifier exam and became a Ph.D. candidate. Congratulations, Yue! [04-24-2020]: Tristan R. Villarreal, the junior in our VIP team, has been awarded the prestigious NEUP scholarship. Congratulations, Tristan! [01-27-2020]: Tao Liu successfully passed his Ph.D. qualifier exam and became a Ph.D. candidate. Congratulations, Tao! 2019 [12-16-2019]: The Lab now has one open position for PhD graduate assistants. We are interested in students with BS or MS degrees in nuclear engineering, computer engineering or applied mathematics. Should you have interest to this position, please contact Dr. Zeyun Wu (Email: zwu@vcu.edu).