Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 4 No. 4 Winter 2019 | Page 15

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awarded the department $450,000 to support
faculty development for its nuclear engi-
neering program. The three-year grant and
its Principal Investigator, Eskandarian, will
support Juliana P. Duarte, assistant professor
of mechanical engineering, to help improve
the modeling used in nuclear power plants,
one of Duarte’s areas of expertise. The NRC
provided the grants to 11 universities. Eskan-
darian said the program supported the hire of
Duarte under the Intelligent Infrastructure for
Human-Centered Communities Destination
Area, a transdisciplinary initiative to balance
technological advancement to a fair, equitable,
and suitable society.
“In a carbon-constrained world, it’s import-
ant that nuclear energy is more advanced,
economical, proliferation resistant, and safer,”
Duarte said. Along with existing faculty,
Duarte will expand the nuclear engineering
program’s computational and experimental
capabilities in thermal-hydraulics, and safety
of advanced nuclear reactors.
“In thermal-hydraulics, the research will
focus on an experimental program to study
post-critical heat flux, including transition
and film boiling heat transfer regimes,” said
Duarte, who received her Ph.D. in nuclear
engineering and engineering physics from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018.
“The experiments will be used to improve the
fundamental understanding of multi-phase
problems and to develop semi-empirical
correlations to improve modeling currently
used in computational fluid dynamics and
thermal-hydraulic system codes.”
The NRC funding specifically targets ten-
ure-track faculty in the first six years of their
careers and includes support for developing
proposals for research, initiating or continu-
ing research projects, and other areas.
Duarte’s research interests include, nuclear
safety analysis, thermal-hydraulic systems,
experimental and computational two-phase
flow, advanced light-water reactors, and small
modular reactors. She is also interested in the
heat transfer performance of accident-tolerant
fuels, particularly in the surface effect on the
critical heat flux and minimum film boiling
temperature at operating conditions. 
Student Fellowships
A fellowship grant of $400,000 over four
years was awarded in support of Virginia
Tech’s Multi-Campus Nuclear Engineering
Fellowship Program. The program will offer
graduate fellowships to students enrolled
in the nuclear engineering program at both
Blacksburg and the greater Washington D.C.
metropolitan area campuses. According to
principal investigator Haghighat, the program
will include midshipmen enrolled in the
Accelerated Masters of Engineering in Nu-
clear Engineering program at the U.S. Naval
Academy.
“Fellows pursue graduate education in
nuclear engineering with a focus on advanced
simulation techniques and codes, nuclear
materials chemistry and radiation effects,
nuclear reactor design and simulation, nuclear
security and nonproliferation, and reactor
safety,” Haghighat said.
The fellowships will allow the nuclear
program to recruit and educate highly-quali-
fied nuclear engineers and scientists who will
contribute to the U.S. nuclear educational
institutions, private organizations, and gov-
ernment agencies and laboratories.
Since 2009, 18 graduate students have
benefited from the fellowship program
with 14 students having completed MS and
PhD degrees in nuclear engineering. These
students are now successfully employed in
different sectors, including U.S. national labs,
universities, nuclear vendors, and the USNA.