Biography

When I was a junior in Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University, I was struggling during the Fall semester of that year.  I was working two jobs to pay room and board and taking a full time course load.  Staying up until 2 a.m. working meant that I was missing some class time, particularly in the course “Fundamentals of Nuclear Engineering”.  My partner in the course dropped out of sight after the first exam, so I was finishing group homework on my own each week.  I was still making an A in the course, but it would be generous to call it a challenge.  The professor teaching the course took notice, and took me aside after class one day to ask me what was going on.  I explained about working and my partner not being around and promised her that I would ask for help if I needed any, then went on my way.  I really didn’t think anything of it.  A few days later she took me aside again and said “I think you need to be involved in research.  Pick any professor in the department that you would like to work with and I will talk to them to recommend you.”  I spent a few days looking through the research each faculty was involved in and what courses they were teaching.  In the end I asked for a recommendation to Distinguished Professor Mamoru Ishii, a world-renowned expert in nuclear reactor safety.  The next day she told me I should show up at his office at 9:00 on Thursday morning. 

      I will admit to being just short of terrified about meeting him.  I hadn’t had any courses with him, and I had heard from some of the graduate students that – let’s just say he had very high standards, and not all of the students met those standards.  However the angst was really unnecessary.  We spoke briefly about some of the research he was doing, he had a few questions about my transcript and work background, and we discussed my research and career interests.  After about half an hour he agreed to hire me as an undergraduate laboratory assistant to work on a new project.  I found out later that I am the only undergraduate student he ever hired.  This really turned my year around.  I still had to work two jobs, but now one of them was interesting and directly related to my chosen field.  I had additional academic support, both because I was spending more time with faculty and because I had the chance to work with graduate students in the field.  As a faculty member myself, I hope that I can have that kind of impact on the students I work with every day.

      So I decided that I wanted to follow in their footsteps.  I continued on to graduate school with Prof. Ishii as my advisor.  In addition to research I was active in service and sought out chances to teach.  I was one of the founding members of the Nuclear Engineering Ambassadorsat Purdue University, a group of top students given responsibility for assisting in recruitment and fundraising events.  I travelled to local high schools to give presentations.  When faculty were traveling to conferences, I asked if I could teach their class while they were gone.  This was – and still is – sometimes difficult for me because I am not naturally outgoing and talkative.  But it was important to me, and well worth the effort.  In research, I asked to help write proposals and be given more responsibility.  After watching me tutoring a few Juniors in reactor physics one morning, the student services assistant responsible for advising all the students in the department told me “If you don’t become a professor and teach, you will be wasting your talent.”   

      My advisor appreciated the fact that if he asked me to do something, he knew that if he left me alone it would get done on timewithout the need for close supervision or micromanaging.  After I earned my doctorate in 2012 he hired me as a postdoc.  In that position I was responsible for managing all of the active research projects and acting as an interface between my advisor and the graduate students working in his laboratory.  This was my first exposure to the administrative side of academic research, and I learned a lot in the first few months.  After about a year and a half we met to discuss my future plans.  He said “I think you have learned everything you can from working here, you are ready to move on”.  A few months after that, in early 2014, I was hired at Missouri S&T.  I very quickly developed a long-term plan for teaching, set key goals for my research program, and involved myself in forward-looking service activities.         The details of those activities will be discussed throughout the rest of this portfolio, along with descriptions of the rationale and significance of those activities.

      I have had to overcome challenges while here as well.  Due to renovations and construction, my laboratory was not complete until three years after my arrival.  I have been moderately successful in obtaining grants for computational and analytical research, but experimental research is my true passion and I am now beginning to submit grant proposals for experimental research and develop experimental capabilities in earnest.  Thus far my research program has resulted in $665,000 in grants in the past 5 years, 56 peer-reviewed journal publications with an h-index of 20.  This led to a Young Member Achievement Award from the Atomic Energy Society of Japan in 2017.  I have also been trying to balance research efforts with higher-than-usual teaching loads for an early-career faculty member.  I have often taught two or three courses each semester, and had to prepare seven different courses (eight different course numbers) during my first seven semesters as a professor.  My teaching focuses on team-based, problem-based learning, and constructive criticisms from the students have been very helpful in adjusting my teaching methods to the needs of the learners.  Over the past year my teaching evaluations have exceeded the university average score for instructors. My service activities have been focused on influencing the future development of the Nuclear Engineering Program and expanding the visibility of my research program and related activities.  I serve as the Undergraduate Coordinator for Nuclear Engineering.  In the past two years I have participated in more recruitment events than any other faculty in the program.

      On a personal note the birth of my two sons – Ethan just before I arrived at Missouri S&T and Larkin two years later – has been both a blessing and an adventure for my wife Amanda and I.  Ethan spent two months in the hospital before he was able to come home – two weeks of that attached to a heart-lung machine that breathed and pumped his blood for him – due to a serious case of pneumonia.  But he fought very hard to heal and he has grown into a precocious and energetic kid who loves playing Minecraft and learning to build things with his own two hands.  Larkin loves to talk about everything he sees, make up songs about his everyday life, and push any and every boundary in his life.  It is a joy to arrive home at the end of each work day to spend the evening playing with cardboard boxes, Legos, cars, and whatever else seems interesting to them that day.

Current Position

Associate Professor, Associate Chair – Academics, Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science, Missouri S&T (March 2014 – Present)

• Educating the next generation of nuclear scientists and engineers
  • Earned overall effectiveness of 3.8/4.0 using team-based and problem-based techniques
  • Advised eight PhD graduates and four MS graduates, with one additional advisee currently pursuing a PhD degree and one pursuing a MS degree
  • Developed a new course in Probabilistic Risk Assessment in consultation with industry experts, one of very few undergraduate courses in the U.S.
  • Established new recruiting and retention programs for undergraduate students
• Researching solutions to thermal-hydraulics challenges
  • Obtained $665,000 in research funding over five years.
  • Published 56 papers in peer-reviewed journals with h-index of 20
  • Developed new solid-gel eutectic phase change material for heating and cooling applications
  • Developed and implemented a method to compute bubble diameter using data from electrical resistivity and optical void probes
  • Developed a mathematically rigorous method for benchmarking semi-empirical multiphase flow models against experiments based on Pareto optimization techniques

Education

• Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University (December 2012)
• M.S. in Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University (May 2009)
• B.S. in Nuclear Engineering, Purdue University (May 2007)

Awards and Honors

• Outstanding Teaching Award, Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2023
• Outstanding Teaching Award, Missouri University of Science and Technology, 2021
• Young Member Achievement Award, Thermal Hydraulics Division, Atomic Energy Society of Japan, 2017
• Eagle Scout, Boy Scouts of America, 2001

Upcoming Events

News and Updates

Tweets by SandTNuclear