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Rensselaer Professor Jie Lian Receives NSF CAREER Award
Nuclear Engineering Expert Seeks To Develop New
Advanced Materials for Use in Nuclear Power
Production
Jie Lian
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Jie Lian, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical,
Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, has won a prestigious Faculty Early Career
Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation
(NSF).
Lian will use the five-year, $500,000 award to further his
research into the design of nanomaterials for use in nuclear
energy systems. The CAREER Award is given to faculty members at
the beginning of their academic careers and is one of NSF’s
most competitive awards, placing emphasis on high-quality
research and novel education initiatives.
“It is a tremendous honor for Dr. Lian to be selected as a
recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, which recognizes his
potential to become a leading scholar in nuclear engineering
and advanced materials,” said
David Rosowsky, dean of the School of Engineering at
Rensselaer. “Jie joins an ever-expanding list of NSF CAREER
Award recipients at Rensselaer. We congratulate him on this
important achievement.”
Lian’s research program is focused on better understanding
advanced materials and nanomaterials to help further nuclear
energy production. Looking forward to the design of future
generations of nuclear reactors and other nuclear technologies,
it will be necessary to develop materials with enhanced
performance that are able to sustain exposure to radiation,
high temperatures, and corrosion. Such radiation-tolerant
materials may be able to extend the lifetime of components, and
could contribute to the safer, more reliable operation of
nuclear systems. This study of “nuclear materials” bridges
together the fields of advanced materials, nanotechnology, and
nuclear engineering.
With his CAREER project, titled “Radiation Interaction with
Nanostructured Ceramics—Integrating Materials Solutions into
Nuclear Education,” Lian will study the behavior of certain
nanostructured ceramics when they are exposed to environments
with extreme levels of radiation. To do this, he will combine
physical experiments with multiscale computations to help
determine how radiation impacts nanostructured ceramics. As
part of this endeavor, he will investigate the atomistic
mechanisms of mitigating radiation damage by nanoscale
features. Lian’s vision is a science-based approach of
developing advanced materials for better control of radiation
through the nanoscale materials design concept.
Lian joined the Rensselaer faculty in 2008, and is a faculty
member of the Nuclear
Engineering Program at Rensselaer.
A prolific researcher, Lian is the author or co-author of
more than 140 studies in peer-reviewed journals with upwards of
2,200 citations, along with three book chapters. He holds two
provisional patents for graphene-based supercapacitors for
electrochemical energy storage, and is known as a pioneer in
exploring graphene synthesis on metals by chemical vapor
deposition. Lian’s research is funded by the NSF, U.S.
Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Energy, and the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
He is a recipient of the 2002 Distinguished Scholar Award
from the Microbeam Analysis Society, and a 2009 Faculty
Development Award from the NRC.
Lian received his bachelor’s degree in materials science and
engineering from Yanshan University in China, his master’s
degree in materials science and engineering from Tsinghua
University in China, and his doctoral degree in nuclear
engineering and radiological science from the University of
Michigan.
For additional information on nuclear engineering at
Rensselaer, visit:
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Published
April 3,
2012 |
Contact: Michael Mullaney
Phone: (518) 276-6161
E-mail: mullam@rpi.edu |
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