William Dawn Successfully Defends PhD Dissertation

On May 2, 2022, William Dawn successfully defended his PhD dissertation, Multiphysics Modeling of Microreactors with Unstructured Mesh Neutron Transport and Exascale Computing Architectures. William’s PhD committee consisted of his advisor, Scott Palmtag, and members, J. Michael Doster, Jason Hou, Ralph Smith, and Steven Hamilton of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

William earned both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University. He was designated as a CASL Undergraduate Research Scholar and successfully completed two distinct appointments. During his undergraduate career, William interned at both GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, LLC (GEH) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Upon graduating summa cum laude with his undergraduate degree in 2017, William was awarded a Nuclear Energy University Program (NEUP) Fellowship by the U.S. Department of Energy to continue his studies in graduate school. As a component of his NEUP fellowship program, William completed an internship at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). During graduate school, William was selected to present his research at two American Nuclear Society (ANS) topical meetings and was selected as COE’s Master’s Scholar of the Year in 2019. William also received the Alan F. Henry/Paul A. Greebler scholarship from the Reactor Physics Division of ANS in 2019. He has chosen to accept a position at Studsvik as a Nuclear Engineer for Computational Methods Development after graduation in June.

Additional information about William’s research can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uFX1bbVIbBSflIVf4mvRFmMfQVA8gM08/view?usp=sharing