Thermohydraulics and Material Properties (TMP) Research Center

About TMP

USU’s Thermohydraulics and Materials Property (TMP) research center has emerged to play a major role regionally in nuclear engineering research and education. TMP currently has 11 active research faculty with interests grouped into two core strengths: materials characterization and thermal hydraulics:

Thermohydraulics and Material Properties Center (TMP)

  Materials Characterization Thermal Hydraulics Biological Effects
Experimental Validation Ryan Berke (Director)
Nadia Kouraytem
Thomas Fronk
Juhyeong Lee
Nick Roberts
Yanqing Su
Haoran Wang
Srishti Banerji
Tim Berk
Barton Smith
Hailei Wang
Elizabeth Vargis
Computational Simulations Som Dutta
Charlie Zheng

As of Fall 2018, TMP currently has $7.9 Million in active nuclear grants. Our research has been sponsored by the US Department of Energy’s Nuclear Engineering University Program (NEUP) , the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the American Nuclear Society (ANS), Idaho National Lab (INL), Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL), Sandia National Lab, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and industry partnerships which include GE Global Research, AREVA, and Westinghouse, among others.

About MAE

The USU Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) is the nearest PhD-granting institution in either Mechanical or Aerospace Engineering to Idaho National Laboratory (INL), with a strong history of collaboration. USU is located 140 miles south of INL, and MAE has more than 25 of its graduates currently employed at INL. INL is represented on the industrial advisory boards of both the Department of MAE and the College of Engineering. More than a third of MAE’s faculty have developed nuclear research, which represents 75.4% of MAE’s total sponsored research. Approximately one third of our PhD students in Mechanical Engineering are working on nuclear-related research.