Emily Downing, a 2nd-year graduate student, will present her Purdue senior design project at the October-November 2021 RAMP User Group Virtual Meeting.

Downing will virtually present the project at the Student Symposium on October 25.

“I am very honored to be invited to this conference, as a lot of time and work went into the project that is being presented,” said Downing. “The process has allowed for working with incredible people, and now is opening up even more opportunities in this field.”

The project, which was done in collaboration with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), developed a tool that determines the dose of radiation that a person could receive in the case of a radioactive plume being released from a nuclear power plant if they were to evacuate or shelter-in-place. This allows for decision makers to evaluate which protective action would result in the least exposure.

“This is a great example of our industry-sponsored senior design project being recognized by others,” said Dr. Seungjin Kim, the Capt. James McCarthy, Jr. and Cheryl E. McCarthy Head of the School of Nuclear Engineering.

Purdue Nuclear Engineering senior design projects provide students with the opportunity to obtain real-world outside the classroom experience by combining design experiences with real-life problems.

RAMP develops, maintains, improves, distributes, and provides training on NRC-sponsored radiation protection and dose assessment computer codes.

Writer: Hima Tammineni, htammine@purdue.edu