Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 1 No. 2 | Page 15

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As pressure increases to shift away from reliance on
fossil fuels, nuclear energy is likely to take a leading
role in energy production — and
Virginia Tech should take a
leading role in the production
of nuclear engineers and
scientists, says mechanical
engineering professor
Alireza Haghighat,
the director of the
Nuclear Science and
Engineering Lab
at the Virginia
Tech Research
Center
– Arlington.
The
laboratory,
which is
supported by
the Institute for
Critical Technology and Applied
Science, is engaged
in a broad array of
research activities in
nuclear science, including
nuclear power, nonproliferation, and safeguards, radiation diagnosis and therapy,
and nuclear policy.

Founded in 2011, it has already
built key collaborations beyond the university. In
2015, the laboratory established a research and
educational partnership with the U.S. Naval Academy,
which recently started its own nuclear engineering
program for undergraduates. The partnership includes
faculty research collaboration and internship for Navy
Midshipmen at Virginia Tech’s National Capital Region
campus. The partnership also provides access to the
Naval Academy’s radiation laboratories and nuclear
facilities.

The laboratory also
works with Pennsylvania State University
and Georgia Tech,
and is exploring
a collaboration
with the Naval Surface
Warfare
Center in
Carderock.
“Our faculty,
our reputation,
and our position in
northern Virginia is
such that these partnerships allow for us to work with a number of highly
specialized groups of people – from Midshipmen to
nuclear scholars,” said Haghighat.
Haghighat also directs the nuclear engineering program of the department of mechanical engineering, a
relatively new addition to the department’s portfolio.
“Virginia Tech is no stranger to nuclear engineering – we had a program as early as 1956 and even a
research reactor in Robeson Hall until 1990,” he said.
But after a twenty-two-year absence, the nuclear
engineering program was relaunched in 2007 in the
mechanical engineering department, and has been
offering master’s and doctoral degrees since 2014.
The program has awarded four master’s and two
doctoral degrees, and all six graduates are continuing
their research or have accepted prestigious positions. In May 2015, the first two doctoral degrees
were awarded. The MS graduate is continuing for a
PhD. One of the PhD’s is working at the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory, and the other one has accepted
a tenure-track position at the highly-ranked Penn
State Nuclear Engineering Program. Since 2014, the
program has also awarded three MENGs. One of
whom works at Duke Energy, the other two who have
received PhD’s from the VT Department of Physics

Alireza Haghighat - director, NSEL

Research Areas: Nuclear Power; Nuclear Security,
Safeguards and Nonproliferation; Detection, Image
Reconstruction & Medicine; Nuclear Policy