2016 + 2017 Del Favero Prize Lecture
Tuesday, April 17, 2018. 3:00 – 5:00 PM
Grier Room, 34-401
The Del Favero Thesis Prize, established in 2014 with a generous gift from alum James Del Favero (SM ’84), will be awarded annually to a PhD graduate in NSE whose thesis is judged to have made the most innovative advance in our field.
2016 WINNER
Jon Walsh
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neutron Thermalization
ABSTRACT: High-fidelity computational physics models and efficient algorithms are essential to achieving the capability for truly predictive simulation of nuclear systems. Accurate descriptions of the physical processes of particle transport and interactions are of particular importance. Computational models which advance the state of the art of neutron thermalization calculations will be presented and, where possible, discussed in the broader context of the modeling and simulation research efforts at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
2017 WINNER
Ashok Ajoy
University of California, Berkeley
Quantum Assisted Sensing Across Length Scales: A New Revolution in MRI
ABSTRACT: Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and its spectroscopic counterpart (NMR), is one of the shining successes of the human scientific enterprise. A new “quantum” revolution is underway that promises wide impact in the $8B+ MRI/NMR industry. In particular, Dr. Ajoy will describe how quantum-assisted sensing technology based on defect centers in wide band-gap materials have opened up compelling ways to perform NMR and MRI orders of magnitude faster and across a wide swath of length scales from the nanoscale, to mesoscale and macroscale. He will also highlight our efforts in Berkeley to build a ultracompact solid-state accessory device based on this technology, that can retro-fit any existing MRI machine, and deliver optically transduced “hyperpolarization” to boost signals by MRI orders of magnitude.
RELATED
- 2014 Del Favero Lecture: The future of fusion power
- 2015/6 Del Favero Lecture: Radiation physics today for materials science tomorrow
April 2018
Department of Nuclear Science & Engineering
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
77 Massachusetts Avenue, 24-107 (map)
Cambridge, MA 02139
nse-info@mit.edu