Youn, Cumings Receive NRC Grant

Assistant Professors Byeng Dong Youn (mechanical engineering, reliability engineering and nuclear engineering) and John Cumings (materials science and engineering) are the 2009 recipients of a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Young Faculty Development Grant.

With his share of the grant, Youn plans to investigate the development of sensor-based prognostics modules (life, reliability and loading) for nuclear systems and thus enable damage prognostics and maintenance platform to proactively manage risk in nuclear reactor systems. These findings will then be cohesively integrated into a reactor material damage analysis platform to be developed by Professor Cumings. The results have the potential to establish a new paradigm of life and reliability prognostics for nuclear system maintenance.

Youn hopes that the outcomes of the faculty development grant will, "help to build our signature research of damage prognostics and maintenance for our nuclear and reliability programs, and to develop a new [graduate] course, 'System Health Monitoring and Prognostics'."