Lucia Gómez Hurtado, now a fourth-year nuclear engineering student, remembers when her father was a graduate student.
“I used to stop by his office and see what he was doing,” she said. “I would sit next to him and look at equations on his computer screen that made no sense to me. He showed me CAD designs and I would ask lots of questions.”
Sasha Chemey, who joined the College of Engineering this fall as an assistant professor of nuclear engineering, often turns to sports to clarify how he envisions his new role.
Small, efficient radiation detector could find its way into mammogram machines
In 2015, a team of Oregon State University researchers devised a new solid-state, scintillator-type radiation detector that offers several key advantages over existing designs: It’s more compact, less expensive to produce, and, critically, does not require lots of high-voltage current to operate.
Associate professor Abi Farsoni, left, and graduate student Steven Czyz discuss a prototype device for detecting radioxenon signals that can indicate the occurrence of a nuclear weapon test.
In September 2017, a series of earth-rippling shivers caught the attention of scientists around the globe. At first blush, the seismic activity suggested an earthquake with an approximate magnitude of 6.0. Then, as the source of the vibrations became clear, government agencies and heads of state began to take close notice.
The newest faculty member in the College of Engineering’s School of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) has been at Oregon State University for more than 20 years.
Steven R. Reese was promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure earlier this year. But he has worked at Oregon State in association with the college since 1997, serving as director of the Radiation Center since 2005. Reese says the upgrade to his position and job title came as a pleasant surprise.
This story was originally published in the fall 2018 issue of Momentum magazine from the College of Engineering.
