Purdue Nuclear Engineering Capstone Design Project

Obtaining real-world experience outside the classroom is just one factor as to what established a well-rounded education. Seniors in the School of Nuclear Engineering receive exactly that during their industry-sponsored senior design class. Thank you to our sponsors in providing our students with opportunities for culminating design experiences with real-life problems. This year we had seven teams presenting industry sponsored and mentored design projects:

Congratulations again to Team NRC and to Todd Smith Team Mentor!  

  • Team ATLAS: Design of a Cesium Plasma Thermionic Converter Computational Model for Use in Optimization Studies (NE Students: Stepan Ozerov, Richard R. Ramos, Jalen A. Rice, Christian X. Young)
  • Team EXELON: Design and Modeling Comparison of High Gadolinia Content Lattices for Exelon Reactors (NE Students: Alan M. Doran, Alyssa M. Granito, Christopher A. Schwappach, Matthew L. Vandokkenburg)
  • Team NIOWAVE: Thermal-Hydraulic Design and Analysis of the Niowave Hybrid Subcritical Testbed (HYST) (NE Students: Adam J. Dix, Catalin A. Harabagiu, Jeremiah M. Pike)
  • Team NRC: Design of a Novel Decision-Making Tool for the Analysis of Shelter-in-Place During a Radiological Release (NE Students: David J. Champlin, Mark P. D’Aloia, Emily F. Downing, Elizabeth H. Jaye)
  • Team RGA: Small Modular Reactor-Electric Storage Hybrid Core Design (NE Students: Sabastian A. Lord, Brennan A. McPherron, Nicholas J. Migliore, John P. Zupke)
  • Team SANDIA: Design of Continuous Water Sampling System for the Detection of Compromised Fuel Elements in the Annular Core Research Reactor (NE Students: Trevor A. Drouillard, Jennifer C. Firehammer, Natalie A. Houghtalen)
  • Team Westinghouse: Designing a Machine Learning AI Algorithm to Simulate Nuclear Power Plant Safety Performance (NE Students: Landon A. Conner, Reza A. Karimi, Jeremy S. Marquardt, Joseph D. Wieder)

Special congratulations to all for completing the work in the unprecedented circumstances this year!  Every year, we select one team who performs best in the final technical presentation.  While all the teams did excellent jobs in presenting the work, we selected one team, so that the selected team can represent Purdue Nuclear Engineering in the National ANS Student Design Competition.  When selected, the School of Nuclear Engineering provides all the financial support for the team’s travel to ANS Winter Meeting.

Based on the evaluation scores collected from the sponsors and faculty who participated in the presentation, Team NRC has won the Best Final Technical Presentation Award this year.  The team was recognized during our special recognition event (held via WebEx).  Congratulations again to Team NRC and to Todd Smith Team Mentor!