Crone
Prof. Wendy Crone is serving as a Program Director within the Directorate for Engineering at the National Science Foundation (NSF). In addition to her responsibilities with the Biomechanics & Mechanobiology (BMMB) Program, the Mechanics of Materials and Structures (MoMS) Program, she is the lead for the Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program in the Division of Civil, Mechanical and Manufacturing Innovation (CMMI).
With her colleagues and students, Prof. Wendy Crone continues to make contributions to cardiac research using an engineered culture system developed in her lab to model both healthy and diseased cardiac behavior. Their 2022 publication in the journal Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology presented results on a model for the inherited cardiac disorder Catecholaminergic Polymorphic Ventricular Tachycardia (CPVT). CPVT can cause sudden cardiac death despite a structurally normal heart. The model developed, which was created using cardiac cells derived from a 19-year-old patient, showed slower intrinsic contraction rate and larger amplitudes of contractile strain. These results add to the limited studies of mechanical behavior of CPVT cardiac cells and identify functional differences that can be further explored to deepen understanding of CPVT and potentially open new avenues to treatment.
Geiger
Benedikt Geiger has formed a multi-disciplinary and well interlinked research group that addresses anomalous particle and heat transport in fusion plasmas. He and his group has developed new spectrometer designs and has prepared diagnostic equipment and analysis techniques for experiments at the W7-X stellarator, the DIII-D tokamak and the NSTX spherical tokamak experiments. Moreover, Benedikt Geiger is a Co-PI of the HSX stellarator and he and his group help upgrading the experiment with a new heating system, as well as with the scientific analysis of plasma discharges.
Sridharan
In July 2022, Prof. Sridharan was named Grainger Professor in the College of Engineering, UW-Madison. This honor recognizes Prof. Sridharan’s decades of research, publications, mentoring, and teaching activities at UW-Madison.
Prof. Sridharan serves on CoE’s IEDE committee as a representative of the EP Department. In the year 2022, IEDE initiated numerous activities towards making environment in UW-CoE even more welcoming and inclusive for all its members. Prof. Sridharan also serves as Chair of the EP Department’s CEDI committee. He has formed a highly inclusive committee consisting of faculty, research and administrative staff, and graduate and undergraduate students, that is well-aligned with CoE’s IEDE committee.
Zhang
Prof. Yongfeng Zhang has developed a multicultural research group that is dedicated to understanding materials behaviors in extreme environments including intense irradiation, high stress, and aggressive corrosion, using multiscale modeling and simulations. In the year of 2022, he has secured funding support for three new projects studying irradiation effects in nuclear fuels and reactor pressure vessels and fundamental defect properties in complex concentrated alloys. The research outcomes from the Microstructural Materials Modeling group led by Prof. Zhang have featured ten published and three accepted journal articles in 2022, with two more under review. In addition, Prof. Zhang serves as the current chair of the TMS Nuclear Materials Committee, which is the largest international professional committee dedicated to nuclear materials. He has also joined the editorial team as an Associated Editor of the journal Frontiers in Materials. He taught the classes EMA 622 and NE 423.
Duarte
Prof. Duarte joined the NEEP Department in August 2022 as an assistant professor working with safety analysis and thermal hydraulics. Duarte continues to lead research projects funded by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy contributing to advanced safety in the current fleet of light water reactors and small modular reactors. Duarte’s research group consists of four Ph.D. and three undergraduate students.
Additionally, Duarte became a charter member of the Faculty Resilience group which aims to build a supportive network of female assistant professors in STEM in the U.S.
Sovinec
Prof. Carl Sovinec’s research group is refactoring the widely used NIMROD simulation code to make it computationally efficient for stellarator applications. Stellarators and related magnetic-confinement configurations have strong helical shaping, and plasma dynamics are best represented, numerically, on a mesh that follows the helical shaping. Generalizing the geometry is one aspect of the development. The other is incorporating a new representation for magnetic field that inherently preserves the conservation of magnetic flux. Sovinec continues to lead the broader NIMROD Team, which includes collaborators from across the country and overseas.
Wilson
Wilson and his research group saw their first foray into modern machine learning, with student Jordan Stomps introducing contrastive learning based on artificial neural networks to categorize specific radiation spectrum features as associated with specific movements of radioactive material.
Wilson, as department chair, successfully oversaw the restructuring of the department over the course of 2022. Following a number of faculty discussions, the Engineering Mechanics faculty voted to transfer their tenure homes to the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and bring the related academic programs with them. To implement this change required a carefully planned array of stakeholder engagements and administrative actions. The faculty tenure home transition was completed at the beginning of 2023, and the academic program changes continued in the following Spring semester.
Wilson also began his term as the Chair of the Nuclear Engineering Department Head Organization (NEDHO).