Biography

Dr. Joseph Graham is an associate professor and the associate chair for research in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science at Missouri S&T. He is the facility director of MSTR, the campus nuclear research reactor. Dr. Graham received his Ph.D. diploma in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories in 2013. From 2013-2015 he held a postdoctoral position at the Ion Beam Materials Laboratory at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He joined the faculty of Missouri S&T in 2015.

Research Interests

Dr. Graham is interested in the study of radiation effects in materials. This includes the basic science of radiation matter interactions from energetic neutrons, charged particles (light and heavy ions, beta particles), and high energy photons (gamma and X-rays). Such radiations are capable of pushing a material’s atomic and electronic structure far away from equilibrium over short time-scales. The dynamics of radiation matter interactions is particularly complex and intricate in ceramics and insulating systems where excitations of the electronic structure and atomic scale disordering interact and combine to alter material properties. Such alterations can have profound effects on: nuclear fuel performance in nuclear fission reactors; sensors and optical elements in spacecraft and fusion reactor diagnostic systems; and electronics in high radiation environments. Dr. Graham’s group studies these effects using a combination of advanced experimental techniques and computational modeling tools.

Education

• 2013 – Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
• 2011- M.S. in Nuclear Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
• 2009 – B.S. in Physics, McGill University