Faculty

Ben Anglin, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, Materials Science, 2012

Dr. Ben Anglin is currently employed by Fluor Marine Propulsion, LLC (at the Naval Nuclear Laboratory at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory site) as a Principal Engineer in the Plant Materials department. His interests include computational materials science, multiscale materials modeling, microstructural science, and structure-property relationships with a focus on grain boundaries and crystallographic texture. Dr. Anglin has a particular interest in using a fast Fourier transform (FFT)-driven crystal plasticity method to efficiently solve environmental degradation material issues for nuclear applications through the explicit incorporation of a material microstructure.

David Aumiller, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor
Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University, 1996

Dr. Aumiller performs research in the area of thermal-hydraulic code and methods development at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory. He has authored papers on topics including constitutive model development, code assessment, and scaling. He has spent considerable time developing the algorithmic and numerical techniques for the development of coupled code systems.

Ken Balkey, P.E., ASME Fellow
Faculty Lecturer
(412) 374-4633
M.S., University of Pittsburgh, 1980.

During over 40 years in the commercial nuclear power industry, Mr. Balkey has provided consultation for technology development related to Codes and Standards and risk management, including risk evaluations for nuclear and non-nuclear structures, systems and components. He has more than 140 publications and documents addressing risk evaluation of the integrity of piping, vessels and structures, and the performance of components. He holds two patents related to reactor pressure vessel integrity and risk-informed inspection of heat exchangers. His honors include ASME’s Dedicated Service Award (1991), and numerous other awards from ASME, Westinghouse, and other institutions.

Bruce Berquist, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor
(412) 476-6053
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1979.

Dr. Berquist has four decades in the Materials Technology Department at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory with emphasis on the development of new core materials for advanced Naval Reactors applications. He has taught the Materials course for 20+ years at the Bettis Reactor Engineering School (BRES).

Frank Buschman
Adjunct Instructor

Heat Transfer and fluid flow phenomena

Thomas Christopher

Mr. Christopher teaches the graduate-level course in nuclear industry management principles. An energy industry management leader, he provides independent consultant services to various energy industry companies. His career leadership positions are manifold, including: Vice Chairman of Areva NP Inc. (a commercial nuclear power engineering, fuel and services company); President and Chief Executive Officer of Areva NP Inc.; member of Areva’s global Executive Committee in France; VP and General Manager of Siemens/Westinghouse Power Services Divisions; VP and General Manager of Westinghouse Energy Services Divisions; and VP and General Manager of Westinghouse Global Nuclear Services Divisions. Mr. Christopher also spent six years in the U.S. Navy, as an officer in the nuclear submarine force, holding the naval reactors engineer certification. Mr. Christopher's teaching is informed by an extensive and unique understanding of energy operations, including fossil power operations, commercial nuclear power operations, and the power market.

Heather Detar
Faculty Lecturer
(412) 716-1445
B.S. ME, The Pennsylvania State University, 2005
Mrs. Detar is an engineer in the Risk Applications and Methods Group of the Westinghouse Electric Company. She has over 7 years of experience in the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) area. She has over 10 years of experience in the probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) area.

Gary Elder, PhD
Faculty Lecturer
(412) 856-5967
Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh, 1982

Dr. Elder has over 40 years of experience in the Nuclear Industry with Westinghouse Electric Co., LLC. His experience includes design and development, major component fabrication, project management, and field inspection and repair services. He served as Chief Engineer for Westinghouse Nuclear Services, overseeing new product development programs and responses to industry critical issues. He has participated in the development of industry guidelines for steam generator and reactor component inspection and maintenance, development of solutions for cracking in alloy 600 materials, design and maintenance of major components within the nuclear steam supply system, and development of equipment reliability and asset management programs for increasing the performance and value of nuclear power plants.

Vinny Esposito, DSc
Adjunct Professor
(724) 327-9593
D.Sc., University of Virginia, 1968.
Dr. Esposito has over 40 years of experience at Westinghouse Electric Company. His experience includes nuclear core thermal hydraulics, safety analysis, fuel design, and numerical analysis. He is the former VP of the Westinghouse Nuclear Fuel Business Unit.

Larry Foulke, PhD
Adjunct Professor & Director of Educational Outreach
(412) 653-0978
Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1967.
Dr. Foulke is a former President of the American Nuclear Society, a Fulbright Fellow at the Institute for Atomenergi in Kjeller, Norway from 1961 to 1962 and the founder and first Director of Pitt's Nuclear Engineering Program. He has over 40 years of technical and management experience at Westinghouse Electric Company and Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory. His expertise includes nuclear core and plant dynamics, space-time kinetics, space nuclear power and public policy. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Pennsylvania.

Daniel Gill, PhD
Faculty Lecturer
(412) 476-7714
Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University, 2009.
Dr. Gill's expertise is in nuclear computational science. He is interested in the development and analysis of advanced numerical methods for the solution of deterministic particle transport problems, particularly iterative and acceleration methods for the solution of the discrete ordinates formulation of the neutron transport equation. Dr. Gill is also interested in the development and analysis of numerical techniques suited for multiphysics simulations in nuclear engineering.

David Griesheimer, PhD
Adjunct Assistant Professor
(412) 624-5430
Ph.D., University of Michigan, 2005.

Dr. Griesheimer’s work at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory addresses physics computer methods development. His specific research interests include computational methods for radiation transport (specializing in Monte Carlo methods), numerical methods, stochastic processes, high performance computing, and artificial intelligence. Since 2005, his research has focused on the development of an advanced Monte Carlo particle transport solver for nuclear reactor analysis and design applications.

Jason Gruber, PhD
Faculty Lecturer
Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University. Material Science, 2007

Dr. Jason Gruber is currently employed by Bechtel Marine Propulsion Corporation (Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory) as a Principal Scientist in the Materials Technology department. His interests include computational materials science, multiscale materials modeling, microstructural science, texture and anisotropy, numerical methods and global optimization. Dr. Gruber is the main developer of the Mesoscale Microstructure Simulation Project (MMSP), a set of high performance codes for microstructure simulation available on www.matforge.org.

Paul Harden
Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer
FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC), a subsidiary of FirstEnergy Corp.
Bachelor of Science, Nuclear Engineering, the University of Cincinnati
MBA, University of Notre Dame.

Mr. Harden served in the U.S. Navy Reserve as an electronics technician, and subsequently held a Senior Reactor Operator License for the Palisades Power Plant in Michigan. He worked in the technical areas of radiation protection, nuclear engineering, operations and design engineering. His prior utility management experience includes: director of Recovery at the Kewaunee Nuclear Plant in Wisconsin; site vice president, director of Site Operations and director of Engineering at the Palisades Nuclear Plant in Michigan; FirstEnergy vice president, Fleet Support; recovery executive for the Perry Plant; site vice president for the Beaver Valley Power Station; and FENOC senior vice president, Fleet Engineering. He was promoted to his current position in March 2015. Mr. Harden draws upon this broad base of utility experience in co-teaching Management Principles in Nuclear Power.

David Haser
Faculty Lecturer
(412) 367-9177
MBA, Youngstown State University, 2005.
Mr. Haser has four decades of experience and is the Operations Superintendent of the Beaver Valley Power Station Unit 2 where he is responsible for work management, operations management, outage management, and training. He has an SRO License. His experience includes safety culture, plant operation improvements, nuclear plant operations and safety. Professional Engineer.

David Helling
Faculty Lecturer
(724) 722-5301
B.S., Miami University, 1969.

Mr. Helling has over 40 years of experience in the nuclear industry. He began his nuclear career in the United States Navy where he was a nuclear trained officer. He is qualified as Engineer by Naval Reactors. After nearly ten years of navy service, he joined Westinghouse Electric Company where he has served in a number of training and operations related positions. He was the Westinghouse Training Manager from 1992 to 2001. He holds a Senior Reactor Operator certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. His current title is Senior Training Advisor in the Training and Operational Services group. Dave teaches a wide variety of classes in topics such as instrumentation and control, engineering, plant operations, and leadership and development.

Vefa N. Kucukboyaci, PhD
Adjunct Professor
Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 2001.

Multi-Physics Methods and Applications; Lattice Physics methods; Criticality Safety Analysis; Particle transport theory and applications; Thermal-Hydraulics methods; High performance/ parallel
computing on supercomputer platforms; LOCA Analysis methods; Radiation shielding applications; Power and research reactor applications.

Jeffrey Lane, PhD
Faculty Lecturer
Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University, 2009

Dr. Lane is a thermal-hydraulic code and methods developer at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, with a current focus on reactor safety analysis applications. His research interests include: two phase flow, computational analysis tools, analytical model development, and Best-Estimate Plus Uncertainty (BEPU) methodologies. He was a Naval Nuclear Propulsion Rickover Fellow.

Charles (Chip) Laymon, PhD
PhD University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Laymon’s interests have included design of detector systems for detection of high energy gamma rays from low cross-section reactions and for neutron flux monitoring. He has also developed custom electronics for a multichannel particle detection system. More recently, Dr. Laymon has designed system electronics for Positron Emission Tomography (PET), a nuclear medicine imaging modality. He has also developed methods for processing the acquired PET data to compensate for attenuation and scatter. Lately, his research has focused on PET image processing for improved quantitation.

William Locke
MSEE, University of Houston 1989
BA Physics, University of New Hampshire 1971

Mr. Locke served as an officer in the United States Navy from 1971-1991. His positions included: Reactor Officer, Operations Evaluation and Quality Assurance, Operator Training, Instructor at the Naval Nuclear Power School. He also completed Naval Nuclear Power Training and was qualified as Engineer for Naval Nuclear Power Plant operations and maintenance. At Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory he served as a Consultant Engineer for safety critical embedded systems hardware and software, as well as serving in many technical and management positions, over approximately 20-years.

Eric Loewen, PhD (ME 2131, Metal-cooled Reactors)
Adjunct Professor
BS, Math & Chemistry, Western State College
MS and Ph.D, Nuclear Engineering, University of Wisconsin

Dr. Eric Loewen is the chief consulting engineer for GEH who supports the Advanced Reactor and Advanced Recycling Center, which couples electro-metallurgical processing and the PRISM sodium cooled reactor. His current work involves leading efforts to deploy the PRISM integral fast reactor.
Dr. Loewen served 10 years in the U.S. Navy as an instructor at the Nuclear Power School. Additionally, he was deployed with the nuclear-powered cruiser USS Long Beach (CGN-9), and served as commanding officer of two Naval Reserve material support units for combatant units. He served as ANS President in 2011-12.

N. Scott Mason, PhD
Research Professor of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Head of Radiochemistry for the University of Pittsburgh Positron Emission Tomography Facility.
PhD, Organic Chemistry, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN

His research interests include the development and utilization of positron emission tomography and single-photon emission computed tomography imaging agents
as non-invasive radioligands for applications in neuroscience, oncology and cardiology.

Chester A. Mathis, PhD

Dr. Mathis is Distinguished Professor of Radiology at the University of Pittsburgh, Director of the University of Pittsburgh Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Facility, and UPMC Endowed Chair of PET Research. Dr. Mathis has a long-standing interest in applying synthetic radiochemistry techniques to develop PET radiopharmaceuticals to study biological function in vivo.

Michael Meholic

Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University, 2011
Dr. Meholic is a thermal-hydraulic code and methods developer at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory. His research interests include: Critical Heat Flux (CHF), post-CHF heat transfer, two phase flow and heat transfer, computational analysis tools, mechanistic model development, and Best-Estimate Plus Uncertainty (BEPU) methodologies. He was also an Admiral Rickover Fellowship recipient.

Kurshad Muftuoglu, PhD
Adjunct Lecturer
Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University

Dr. Muftuoglu has more than 20 years of experience in the nuclear industry and is a Principal Engineer/Technologist at GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy. His area of expertise includes: nuclear reactor safety with emphasis on loss-of-coolant accident; best-estimate methodology development; computational thermal-hydraulics; and system codes development, including legacy code maintenance and large-scale software project management.

Rod Penfield
Plant Manager, Beaver Valley Nuclear Power Station
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Reactor Operator and Senior Reactor Operator, U.S. Naval Nuclear Reactor Power Program
B.S. Business Management, Bellevue University

Mr. Penfield entered the nuclear field through his service in the U.S. Naval Nuclear Reactor Power Program. He has also served as Director of Regulatory and Performance Improvement at the Arkansas Nuclear One power station, and at multiple positions at the Cooper Nuclear Power Station, including Manager of Operations and Nuclear Safety Assurance Director.

Justin Pounders, PhD
Faculty Lecturer
Ph.D., Georgia Tech University

Dr. Pounders works at the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in the area of multiphysics methods development. He is generally interested in computational methods development for reactor physics problems. His most recent research efforts have been in the areas of neutronic homogenization and equivalence methods in plant simulations, transient multiphysics code coupling, and tightly coupled multiphysics computations.

Ed Renaud
Adjunct Lecturer

BS, Engineering, Massachusetts Maritime Academy

MBA Katz Graduate Business School
Ed Renaud has over 38 years working in the Nuclear Industry with experience in construction and operating plant as both Quality Assurance and Engineering. For over 10 years Ed has served on Sub-Committees, several Working Groups and Task Teams for the ASME Section III Boiler & Pressure Code and NQA-1. With a BS in Engineering from Massachusetts Maritime Academy and an MBA from Katz Graduate Business School, he understands plant operation and the business side of the Nuclear Industry.

Richard Siergiej, PhD
Adjunct Associate Professor
(412) 476-7587
Ph.D., Lehigh University, 1992
Dr. Siergiej is presently employed by the Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory and previously worked at the Westinghouse Science and Technology Center. His interests are computer simulation and modeling, advanced energy conversion technologies, semiconductor physics, fabrication, and materials, and next generation instrumentation and control system.

Sola Talabi, PhD (ME2104 Nuclear Operations and Safety, advanced reactors)
Adjunct Professor
B.Sc., Mechanical Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pgh., PA. 2000, M.Sc., Mechanical Engineering (microfluidics) Carnegie Mellon University, Pgh., PA. 2003, MBA, Masters in Business Administration, Carnegie Mellon University, Pgh., PA. 2007, Ph.D., Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pgh., PA. 2013

Dr. Talabi served in Nuclear Services, Technology Transfer, and Risk Management at Westinghouse Electric Company for 15-years. He currently leads Pittsburgh Technical, a nuclear engineering research firm that addresses: identification and characterization of additional post-nuclear accident decontamination mechanisms to support Level II PRA safety margin characterization; measurement and analysis to account for additional post-accident aerosol decontamination in SMR systems, and methodology to improve post-accident evacuation time estimates and allow potential emergency planning zone size reduction.

David S. Teolis (ENGR/ME 2104, Nuclear Operations and Safety with T. Congedo)
Adjunct Professor
M.S. Statistics (2010) Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO; M.S. Industrial Engineering, Operations Research option (1984) University of Pittsburgh; B.S. Industrial Engineering (1981) University of Pittsburgh

Mr. Teolis teaches Probabilistic Risk Assessment within ME 2104. He has employed probabilistic methods in the analysis of nuclear and transportation systems at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory, Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC, and Bombardier Transportation, and has also served in Quality and Process Control at Bettis Laboratory, over a collective period of forty-years.

Michael Wenner, PhD
Adjunct Professor
BS Nuclear Engineering, Penn State University, 2000, MS Nuclear Engineering, Penn State University, 2003, PhD Nuclear Engineering, University of Florida, 2010

Dr. Wenner is a Principal Engineer in Westinghouse Electric Company Research and Technology. Recent activities include technical analyses in the areas of criticality safety for spent fuel pool storage, radiation shielding, source term analyses for various systems, reactor physics modeling, advanced fuel cycle analysis, and software design and development.