A team of current and graduated Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute students will present at the American Nuclear Society’s Winter Conference in Washington, D.C., this November. The students were selected as finalists in the ANS Student Design Competition earlier this year for their senior design project titled “Design of a Zirconium Critical Benchmark.”

In the project, the students designed an experiment to measure and validate neutron interaction data with zirconium isotopes. Group member Mason Yu ’20, an undergraduate in the mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering department, says the team chose zirconium because of its important nuclear applications. 

Yu was a junior when the initial competition occurred, but his teammates were seniors. They have since graduated from Rensselaer, but will join him for the presentation in November.

The group’s project was one of two undergraduate projects to be chosen as a finalist.