Aline Des Cloizeaux is currently serving as the Nuclear Power division Director at the IAEA, based in Vienna, Austria.
Eunice Newton Foote, a descendant of Sir Isaac Newton through her father, is believed to be the first scientist to study and conclude that rising carbon dioxide gas levels could raise atmospheric temperatures and impact the earth's climate. Up until 2010, scientists had believed that John Tyndall deserved the credit as the first person to show the involvement of infrared radiation in the greenhouse effect. Although Foote published the results of her experiments as early as 1856, demonstrating the absoprtion of heat by CO2 and water vapor and her hypothesis that changing amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere would alter the climate and despite this being possibly the very first physics publication by an American woman in a scientific journalI wasn't until her work was rediscovered in 2010 that she was recognized as the pioneer that she was.
Eunice Foote was born in Connecticut in 1819 and was a scientists, inventor, mother and women's rights campaigner. After marrying Elisha Foote in 1841, Foote settled in Seneca, where she met and befriended Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was the daughter of Judge Daniel Cady, who was the attorney who had trained Elisha Foote in the law. Although she attended the Rensselaer School and gained a broad education in scientific theory and practice, including laboratory testing, she was denied access to further studies.
From Wikipedia:
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Eunice Foote – "Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays" (1856), American Journal of Science and Arts. Foote recognized the implications of carbon dioxide's heat-capturing properties—the greenhouse effect—for the entire planet.
An amateur scientist, Foote conducted a series of experiments that demonstrated the interactions of sunlight on different gases. She used an air pump, two glass cylinders, and four mercury-in-glass thermometers. In each cylinder, she placed two thermometers and then used the pump to evacuate the air from one cylinder and compress it in the other cylinder. When both cylinders reached equal ambient temperatures, they were placed in the sunlight and temperature variances were measured. She also placed the containers in the shade for comparison and tested the temperature results by dehydrating one cylinder and adding water to the other, to measure the effect of dry versus moist air. Foote noted that the amount of moisture in the air impacted the temperature results. She performed this experiment on air, carbon dioxide (CO2) (which was called carbonic acid gas in her era), and hydrogen, finding that the tube filled with carbon dioxide became hotter than the others when exposed to sunlight.
She wrote: "The receiver containing this gas became itself much heated—very sensibly more so than the other—and on being removed [from the Sun], it was many times as long in cooling".
Foote noted that CO2 reached a temperature of 125 °F (52 °C) and that the amount of moisture in the air contributed to temperature variances. In connection with the history of the Earth, Foote theorized that "An atmosphere of that gas would give to our earth a high temperature; and if, as some suppose, at one period of its history, the air had mixed with it a larger proportion than at present, an increased temperature from its own action, as well as from increased weight, must have necessarily resulted." Her theory was a clear statement of climatic warming caused by increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Foote described her findings in a paper, "Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun's Rays", that she submitted for the tenth annual AAAS meeting, held on August 23, 1856, in Albany, New York. For reasons that are unclear, Foote did not read her paper to those present—women were in principle allowed to speak publicly at the conference—and her paper was instead presented by Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution. Henry introduced Foote's paper by stating "Science was of no country and of no sex. The sphere of woman embraces not only the beautiful and the useful, but the true". Yet, he discounted her findings in the New-York Daily Tribune article about the presentation, saying "although the experiments were interesting and valuable, there were [many] [difficulties] encompassing [any] attempt to interpret their significance".
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Sources:
Wikipedia: Eunice Newton Foote
BBVA OpenMind: Eunice Newton Foote, the Forgotten Pioneer of the Greenhouse Effect, Mar. 8, 2022
Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, Carbon emissions, Climate change, History Timeline, History-making, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Scientific debate, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID
Clarice Evone Phelps (née Salone) is an American nuclear chemist researching the processing of radioactive transuranic elements at the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). She was part of ORNL's team that collaborated with the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research to discover tennessine (element 117). The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) recognizes her as the first African-American woman to be involved with the discovery of a chemical element.
Phelps was formerly in the US Navy Nuclear Power Program. At ORNL, Phelps manages programs in the Department of Energy's Isotope & Fuel Cycle Technology Division investigating industrial uses of nickel-63 and selenium-75.
Clarice Phelps, who was raised in Tennessee, United States became interested in chemistry during her childhood when she was given a microscope and encyclopedia-based science kit by her mother. Her interest was further nurtured by her secondary school science teachers. Although Phelps completed a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Tennessee State University in 2003, Phelps struggled academically in college. Unable to find employment after graduating, she joined the United States Navy. There, Phelps enrolled in the Navy's Nuclear Power School, which she credits with teaching her "how to study." Phelps studied nuclear power, reactor theory, and thermodynamics and graduated in the top 10% of her class of 300–400 students. In 2019, Phelps told an interviewer that she pursued nuclear chemistry in part because of the lack of black women in the field, commenting: "They needed to see somebody like me sitting in the same spaces that they were at, and excelling in that same space."
Phelps served as a non-commissioned officer in the United States Navy Nuclear Power Program. She spent four and a half years aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan, operating the nuclear reactor and steam generator chemistry controls, and maintaining the water in the reactor. She was deployed twice and was the only black woman in her division on the ship.
After serving in the US Navy, Phelps first worked at chemical instrument company in Chicago, Illinois, but a year later she returned to Tennessee. In June 2009, Phelps joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She started as a technician and was later promoted to research associate and program manager. Phelps works in the Nuclear Science and Engineering Directorate as the project manager for the nickel-63 and selenium-75 industrial isotope programs. As a member of Oak Ridge's Nuclear Materials Processing Group, she is part of the research and development staff, working with "super heavy" transuranic isotopes that are produced mainly by nuclear transmutation. She is also a member of the Medical, Industrial and Research Isotopes Group, where she researches elements such as actinium, lanthanum, europium, and samarium.
Phelps was involved in the discovery of the second-heaviest known element, tennessine (element 117). She was part of a three-month process to purify 22 mg of berkelium-249, which was shipped to the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research and combined with calcium-48 in a fusion reaction to create tennessine. In IUPAC's crediting Oak Ridge laboratory collectively as principal co-discoverer of tennessine, it acknowledged 61 individuals at ORNL who had contributed to the project including members of operations staff, support personnel, and researchers such as Phelps. It recognized Phelps as the first African-American woman involved with the discovery of a chemical element.
Phelps has contributed to additional research efforts, including those of spectroscopic analysis and spectrophotometric valence state studies of plutonium-238 and neptunium-237 and 238 for the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA). Phelps has also studied electrodeposition with californium-252 for the Californium Rare Isotope Breeder Upgrade project.
From 2016 to 2020, Phelps earned a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering through the nuclear and radiochemistry program at the University of Texas at Austin. As of 2021, Phelps is a Ph.D. student in the nuclear engineering program at University of Tennessee.
Source:
- Wikipedia, Clarice Phelps.
Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID
American physicist Katharine Way (1902-1995) is best known for establishing the Nuclear Data Project, an effort to organize and share nuclear data. She was also one of Manhattan Project’s leading female scientists during World War II, where she worked at the the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. Later, she became an adjunct professor of physics at Duke University.
Her scientific contributions include the “Way-Wigner formula” that was developed with physicist Eugene Wigner and calculates the beta decay rates of fission products. In addition to authoring numerous papers on nuclear data, she also helped launch the scientific journals Nuclear Data Sheets and Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables.
From 1929 to 1934 Way studied at Columbia University, where Edward Kasner stoked an interest in mathematics, and co-authored Way's first published academic paper. She received her BS in 1932 and went next to the University of North Carolina, where John Wheeler stimulated her interest in nuclear physics and she became his first PhD student.
In 1938, Way became a Huff Research Fellow at Bryn Mawr College, which allowed her to receive her PhD for her thesis on nuclear physics, "Photoelectric Cross Section of the Deuteron." She subsequently took up a teaching position at the University of Tennessee in 1939, becoming an assistant professor in 1941.
At a conference in New York in 1938, Way presented a paper, "Nuclear Quadrupole and Magnetic Moments," in which she examined deformation of a spinning atomic nucleus under three models, including Niels Bohr's liquid drop model. She followed this up with a closer examination of the liquid drop model in a paper entitled "The Liquid-Drop Model and Nuclear Moments," in which she showed that the resulting cigar-shaped nucleus could be unstable.
In 1942, Wheeler recruited Way to work on the Manhattan Project at the Metallurgical Laboratory in Chicago. Working with physicist Alvin Weinberg, Way analyzed neutron flux data from Enrico Fermi's early nuclear reactor designs to see whether it would be possible to create a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. These calculations were put to use in the construction of Chicago Pile-1. Afterwards, she examined the problem of nuclear poisoning of reactors by certain fission products. With physicist Eugene Wigner she developed the Way-Wigner approximation for fission product decay.
Way also visited the Hanford Site and the Los Alamos Laboratory. In mid-1945 she moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where she continued her research into nuclear decay. While there, she began to specialize in the collection and organization of nuclear data.
With Dexter Masters, she co-edited the 1946 New York Times bestseller One World or None: a Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb. The book included essays by Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer, and sold over 100,000 copies.
Way moved to Washington, D.C., in 1949, where she went to work for the National Bureau of Standards. Four years later, she persuaded the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council to establish the Nuclear Data Project (NDP), an organization with special responsibility for gathering and disseminating nuclear data, under her leadership. The NDP moved to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1964, but Way remained its head until 1968. Beginning in 1964, the NDP published a journal, Nuclear Data Sheets, to disseminate the information that the NDP had gathered. This was joined the following year by a second journal, Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables. She also persuaded the editors of Nuclear Physics to add keywords to the subject headings of articles to facilitate cross-referencing.
Way left the NDP in 1968 and became an adjunct professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, although she continued as editor of Nuclear Data Sheets until 1973, and Atomic Data and Nuclear Data Tables until 1982.
Sources:
- DOE Office of Nuclear Energy, "5 Women Who Changed History in Nuclear Science," March 24, 2023.
- Wikipedia, Katharine Way.
Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID
[Note: this bio being included in our "Women in Nuclear" series, was adapted from a bio that first appeared on the IEAE's website: "Not Your Typical Nuclear Engineer: Blazing a Trail for Women," published March 6, 2020.]
Tatjana Jevremovic, a trailblazing nuclear engineer at the IAEA, has always stood out on the job — whether for helping her students embrace the challenges of life or developing a seminal neutronics code that, years later, is still used in Japan for relicensing nuclear power plants. But in an industry famous for being a man’s world, something else has also made her stand out: being a woman.
In 1996, while working as a chief engineer for Nuclear Fuel Industries Ltd in Japan, Jevremovic could be easily spotted from a distance walking with scores of strictly uniformed male colleagues at the company’s factory site near the city of Tokai-Mura. The reason: uniforms for female nuclear engineers did not exist in a company that had never had one.
“The working environment in this field is generally not as enabling for women as it could be,” Jevremovic said. “But nuclear science and technology continue to fascinate me to this day—and I would do it all over again.”
As the IAEA marks International Women’s Day on 8 March, the story of Jevremovic’s remarkable career journey, from her native Belgrade to Vienna via Japan and the United States, is both an inspiration for young women considering the nuclear field and a cautionary tale about the potential pitfalls of an industry that, despite efforts to achieve a better gender balance, remains largely dominated by men.
Science, math, learning, culture
Born in then Yugoslavia, Jevremovic from the very beginning was surrounded by science and math and a passion for learning and culture. Her mother, a professor of linguistics and French, instilled in her a drive to succeed by creating her own opportunities. Her geologist father believed math solved all problems.
“I owe my straightforwardness to him,” said Jevremovic, who joined the IAEA in 2016 and serves as Team Leader for Water Cooled Reactor Technology Development in the Department of Nuclear Energy. “He was not the most patient teacher, but I grew to love math nevertheless.”
Growing up in the Serbian capital, she was always fascinated by books, dictionaries, science magazines—anything that imparted knowledge. She wrote poems, started to paint and read voraciously. One day, when she was about 12, she came across a book called On Nuclear Energy by Donald J. Hughes and translated by Dragoslav Popovic, who later became her professor at the University of Belgrade.
“I didn’t know anything about nuclear reactors or nuclear energy—I had only a vague idea about fission,” she said. “The fact that I did not understand it is why I decided, then and there, to study nuclear engineering and chose it as my profession.”
Although interested in the medical applications of nuclear technology, Jevremovic decided to go into engineering. She saw it as more ‘hands on’ and could make a better contribution to society.
Rajka Jovetic, who studied with Jevremovic, witnessed this approach first hand. “During my last year of university, I had a baby. After a few weeks, Tatjana appeared with present for the baby and a big notebook for me. She said: ‘Here, everything is in this notebook, just learn it.’ And it really was: notes from lessons, problems with solutions, all important stuff underlined, it was ... like the best book ever. I passed the exam and went back to the university thanks to Tatjana,” said Jovetic, who today leads automation for HBIS GROUP Serbia Iron & Steel.
After graduation in 1983, Jevremovic went to work as an associate engineer for a company in hydro and thermal power generation and water management. But while she quickly moved up to project leader, her desire to keep learning was too strong. After gaining a master’s degree, in 1990 she was one of four candidates selected worldwide by the Japanese government to be a PhD fellow at the University of Tokyo.
As chief nuclear engineer at Nuclear Fuel Industries Ltd, she developed a new neutronics code based on Method of Characteristics. Later, with her team, she produced the first detailed plots of neutron flux in reactor cores using no introduced approximations in the code, which is still used in the relicensing of nuclear power plants in Japan
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Source:
IAEA: "Not Your Typical Nuclear Engineer: Blazing a Trail for Women" Mar 6, 2020, published on the IAEA website, by Daria Shumilova and Irena Chatzis.
Please continue reading the bio at the above link.
Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear innovation, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID
The Atomic Heritage Foundation has posted a page entitled "Women and the Bomb" in partnership with the National Museum of Nuclear Science & HIstory. This page provides a bit of insight into the lives and contributions of women who were involved with the Manhattan Project, whether solely as spouses of scientists recruited to work at Los Alamos, or as scientists or professionals in their own right. As the text explains:
Women played a very important role in varying aspects of the Manhattan Project. However, because both the military and upper echelons of the scientific community were male dominated, the role of women was often overshadowed. Women participated in both a civilian and a military capacity.
Unfortunately, only a small fraction of the women at Los Alamos worked as scientists. Most women found themselves at the Hill because their husbands had been recruited to work on the Manhattan Project. Isolated from the outside world by barbed-wire fences, and from the intellectual life of the Lab by the stringent regulations which prevented scientists from discussing the project with their spouses, these women had to create new lives and identities for themselves. They were encouraged to work, often taking positions as teachers, assistants, lab technicians, nurses and switchboard operators. Amongst these was Laura Fermi, the wife of Enrico Fermi, the associate director of the laboratories at Los Alamos. In her memoire "Atoms in the Family: My Life with Enrico Fermi," she wrote:
Apart from the shortage of woman power, which slowly decreased as single girls joined the project, it was an established policy to encourage wives to work. Colonel Stafford Warren, the head of the Health Division of the Manhattan District, placed little faith in women's moral fortitude. In the early days of the project he declared himself in favor of giving work to the wives to "keep them out of mischief." The wives were only too happy for an opportunity to peek inside secret places, to share the war effort, to earn a bit of money. I worked three hours, six mornings a week, as clerical assistant to the doctor's secretary in the Tech Area. I was classified in the lowest category of employees, for I had no special experience or college degree... So, in Los Alamos I was paid at the lowest rate for my three daily hours, which was not much; but I was kept busy, happy, and "out of mischief." I was given a blue badge that admitted me to the Tech Area but did not permit that I be told secrets; these were all saved for the white badges, the technical personnel.
This is a relatively short summary of the women of the Manhattan Project, and well worth a view. You can read "Women and the Bomb" published June 5, 2014 here.
Source:
Atomic Heritage Foundation: Women and the Bomb, June 5, 2014. With references from:
Ruth H. Howes and Caroline L. Herzenberg, Their Day in the Sun: Women of the Manhattan Project (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999)
Ruth Marshak, "Life at P.O. Box 1663," in The Manhattan Project: The Birth of the Atomic Bomb in the Words of Its Creators, Eyewitnesses, and Historians, ed. Cynthia C. Kelly (New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007)
Jane S. Wilson and Charlotte Serber, eds.,Standing By and Making Do: Women of Wartime Los Alamos (Los Alamos, NM: Los Alamos Historical Society, 1988)
Kirsty Gogan is the founder and managing partner of LucidCatalyst and TerraPraxis, and is an internationally sought-after advisor to governments, industry, academic networks and NGOs. Kirsty is an expert who has traveled the world in support of clients, doing research and serving as a speaker on topics as diverse as nuclear energy, science communication, climate change, competitiveness and innovation at conferences and events around the world. Together with some partners, Kirsty recently co-founded Synergetic, a new technology-enabled project developer that is working to deliver large, highly standardized projects, to produce cost-competitive, clean, synthetic fuels at the scale required by a nation to replace fossil fuel use through world-class, high-volume manufacturing supply chain and 100% clean power.
Kirst has more than 15 years’ experience serving as a senior advisor to Government on climate and energy policy, including 10 Downing St, and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. Kirsty is also a managing partner of LucidCatalyst, a highly specialized international consultancy focused on large-scale, affordable, market-based decarbonization of the global economy. LucidCatalyst was recently commissioned to produce the widely cited Energy Technologies Institute Nuclear Cost Drivers Study, and by ARPA-E to conduct a study on Cost and Performance Requirements for Flexible Advanced Nuclear Plants in Future U.S. Power Markets.
Kirsty chairs the UK Government’s Nuclear Innovation Research and Advisory Board (NIRAB) Cost Reduction Working Group. In 2019, NIRAB recommended investment of $1.3 billion between 2021 and 2025 to boost the progress of innovation, leading to a package of measures designed to support UK net zero goals in 2020.
Kirsty’s voluntary work includes having co-founded Energy for Humanity (EFH). She serves on the Board of Nuclear Innovation Alliance, as well as Voices for Nuclear. The US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has appointed her to serve on a new committee to identify opportunities and barriers to the commercialization of new and advanced nuclear energy technologies over the next 30 years.
Publications Kirsty has recently contributed to include: Advancing Nuclear Innovation: Responding to Climate Change and Strengthening Global Security (2019) as a Board member of the Global Nexus Initiative. She is a regular contributor to climate-related efforts at the IAEA, OECD-NEA and the Clean Energy Ministerial (NICE Future Initiative). She has peer-reviewed and provided expert input to the International Energy Agency Nuclear Power in a Clean Energy System (2019) and IEA Energy Technology Perspectives (2020) as well as CleanTech Group’s investor report on advanced reactors in the clean energy transition (2020) and the Royal Society report on Nuclear Cogeneration: civil nuclear energy in a low carbon future (2020).
Watch Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder, Michael Liebreich interview Kirsty at Cleaning Up – Leadership in an age of climate change.
Source:
Slate: Women have been disappearing from science for as long as they've been allowed to study science,by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Hossein Taheri, May, 2, 2022
Published by editor in Advanced Nuclear, Carbon emissions, Climate change, Construction costs, Future of Energy, Government support, International support for nuclear, Nuclear competitiveness, Nuclear innovation, Private companies, UK Climate Policy, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID, Zero emission energy
Harriet Brooks was a physicist whose experiments helped to solve the question of what particles were emitted during radiation. As a young researcher in 1901, working in a newly established physics laboratory at McGill Univeristy, Brooks showed that radioactivity involved the creation of an entirely new atomic element. Working along with Ernest Rutherford, her mentor, she identified the element that was later named radon. Unfortunately, over time, Rutherford was deemed the "father of nuclear physics" for work done by Brooks, as her career in physics was cut permaturely short, because of her marriage.
Born in Exeter, Canada in 1876, Brooks was the first Canadian nuclear physicist and the first woman to earn a master's degree from McGill University. SHe became Rutherford's first graduate student assistant at McGill.
In her short tenure in her career, she resolved one of the most perplexing problems of early 20th century chemistry when she discovered that radioactive heavy elements release an entirely different element as they decay. Specifically, by analyzing emissions from the radioactive element thorium she determined that it wasnot just thorium in vapor form, but rather a new element, that we now call radon. This discovery demonstrated that radioactive elements transform to other elements, a fact that is core to the modern conception of radioactivity. Brooks’ contributions stand at the foundation of contemporary nuclear science.
Although Brooks authored research papers by herself and together with Rutherford, who vividly cited her work and gave her credit in his publications and lectures, Brooks' contributions went largely unnotices and the discovery of radon attributed to Rutherford alone. It took 70 years after her death, for her contributions to be formally acknowledged and for her to be inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame, which did not occur until 2002. Still, in 2010, the American Physical Society honored Rutherford and Frederick Soddy, another collaborator for hteir work on radioactivity but Brooks' contributions went unmentioned.
Brooks managed to overcome many obstacles over the course of her career. Her lack of wealth was addressed by earning fellowships. When she was dismissed from a teaching position at Barnard College as a result of her engagement, she found employment as a full-time researcher at the Curie-led Radium Institute in Paris, and later secured an appointment at the University of Manchester that allowed her to continue her work. It was only her marriage to a man who wanted her to settle down with him in Montreal, away from universities and research laboratories, that effectively ended her scientific career.
Awards & Honors
- Inducted into the Canadian Science and Engineering Hall of Fame in 2002, 70 years after her death.
Source:
Slate: Women have been disappearing from science for as long as they've been allowed to study science,by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan and Hossein Taheri, May, 2, 2022
Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID
Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Women in Nuclear
Dr. Rita Baranwal was nominated by the President to serve as the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy (ONE) and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on June 20, 2019 (by a vote of 86 to 5), becoming the first woman to ever lead the Office of Nuclear Energy.
In that role, Dr. Baranwal directed programs to promote research and development (R&D) on existing and advanced nuclear technologies that sustain the existing U.S. fleet of nuclear reactors, enable the deployment of advanced nuclear energy systems, support nuclear technology for space and defense applications, and enhance the U.S.A.'s global commercial nuclear energy competitiveness. She also:
- Launched innovative programs to demonstrate advanced nuclear reactor designs, launched a new U.S. reactor innovation center, and a unique private-public partnership to develop new U.S. nuclear testing capabilities
- Collaborated with U.S. intergovernmental agencies (e.g. Departments of State, Commerce, and Treasury, National Security Council, Office of Science & Technology Policy, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Development Finance Corporation) to globally deploy new U.S. civil nuclear technology.
- Implemented civil nuclear agreements with two countries; initiated civil nuclear agreement discussions with eleven countries.
- Partnered with NASA on nuclear technology and expertise for space exploration. Contributed to the National Strategy for Space Nuclear Power and Propulsion, Executive Order on Reactors for Space Exploration, and DOE’s Space Strategy.
- Managed Congressionally-enacted budget of $1.5B (FY20).
- Served as the Equity in Energy Champion for DOE’s Office of Economic Impact and Diversity.
Following her service as the #1 at ONE, Dr. Baranwal served as the VP of Nuclear and Chief Nuclear Officer for the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) for over a year. As of 2022, Dr. Baranwal has returned to Westinghouse as the Chief Technology Officer.
Prior to her appointment to the ONE, Dr. Baranwal served as the director for the DOE's Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) since 2016, an initiative hosted at Idaho National Laboratory. GAIN is the way the U.S. Government connects industry with national laboratories to help commercialize nuclear technologies. Under her leadership, GAIN positively impacted 112 projects and companies.
Before that, Dr. Baranwal worked for Westinghouse in the nuclear fuel division, leading a number of research and development programs. She started her career at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory helping to develop advanced nuclear fuel materials for US naval reactors.
Dr. Baranwal has a bachelor’s degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in materials science and engineering and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in the same discipline from the University of Michigan.
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Sources:
LinkedIn: Dr. Rita Baranwal
NayaFace: Rita Baranwal sworn in as 1st woman US Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy at DOE, July 25, 2019.
Published by editor in Brilliant thinkers, History-making, Nuclear R&D, Women in Nuclear, WOMEN IN NUCLEAR GRID
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