The Consortium for Monitoring, Verification, and Technology (MTV) mission is to advance state-of-the-art technologies and policies related to nuclear treaty verification and train the next generation of nuclear professionals. During the Fall Term, MTV welcomed eight undergraduate students to participate in the 2024 MTV Undergraduate Fellowship. These students gained theoretical and applied work experience working closely with current U-M Ph. D. candidates.
- John Cashy: John added more functionalities to the PyMPPost pulse-processing software, which can help evaluate detector responses from MCNP simulations. He also refactored another code, pyDualRead, for future development in the group.
- Tavo Duvall and David Pidugu: Tavo and David improved the computation speeds of a 3D imaging code used in the group for gamma-ray and neutron imaging. The new implementation uses a Breadth First Search approach and parallelization for significant speedups in the data processing.
- Christian Irvine: Christian completed his undergraduate studies this fall, enhancing neutron spectrum unfolding methods through work with our group and LANL’s NEN-2 team. He validated simulation results with experimental time-of-flight data and applied his improvements to our Cf-252 neutron source. Christian will be pursuing his Ph. D. at NC State with Professor Mattingly.
- Andrew Lucas: Andrew advanced gamma-ray spectroscopy methods from HPGe measurements for Xe-135 analysis, achieving publication-ready results and contributing to Monte Carlo simulation validation.
- Oscar Stennes: Oscar modeled detector configurations in MCNP, improving his simulation expertise and contributing valuable insights into measured and simulated data comparisons for Cm-244 and Cf-252 measured by organic scintillators.
- Tiffany Zhou and Michael Yang: Tiffany and Michael enhanced the PyNoise suite to analyze CROCUS data across a wide range of power levels (microW to W). Tiffany implemented a memory-efficient feature for handling large datasets, while Michael expanded the suite’s cross-chamber analysis and time unit compatibility, enabling deeper insights into the experimental results.
Thank you to our MTV undergraduate fellows for the impressive work this past term!