News
Dr. Sheldon Landsberger gave a presentation at the NuFor 2025 (Nuclear Forensics) conference in London, England at the Institute of Physics on October 8. More than 100 people attended mainly undergoing nuclear forensics research. Presentation co-authored by Derek Haas gave an overview of their nuclear forensics research conducted at the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab over the last 23 years.
Texas has a 3–5 year window to staff more than 10,000 advanced nuclear jobs tied to announced power projects in the state. This demand for talent—concentrated in construction trades, nuclear technicians, operational staff, and four-year technical graduates—far exceeds the capacity of current in-state education and training pipelines and requires years to develop. Without targeted interventions, workforce constraints will become a bottleneck for deployment timelines and economic opportunity. To meet the speed and scale of the near-term demand for talent for these projects:
- Employers will have to move beyond advisory roles and directly invest in nuclear talent development.
- State agencies will need to send clear policy signals regarding nuclear workforce priorities, and
- Labor and Education will need to expand their pipelines, capacity, and programs.
The Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program at UT Austin held the Texas Nuclear Workforce Development Workshop to align these stakeholders on actionable recommendations designed to complement recent state nuclear workforce development legislation.
This Nuclear Niche event will be co-sponsored with the KBH Center and our UT American Nuclear Society Student Chapter. We will be welcoming Evan Cummings,Senior Director of Business Development at Kairos Power to speak on the commercialization challenges for advanced nuclear reactors and how to bring them to market.
📅 When: Thursday, October 16, 6:00 PM
📍 Where: ETC 3.112
🎤 Speaker: Evan Cummings, Senior Director, Business Development at Kairos Power
The Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program at The University of Texas at Austin proudly congratulates Clayton Hudson on the successful defense of his PhD dissertation, “Development of a Radioisotope Production Facility Using a Cryogenic Cooling System.”
The Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program at The University of Texas at Austin proudly congratulates Khiloni Shah on the successful defense of her PhD dissertation, “Measurement of the ⁴⁰Ca(n,α)³⁷Ar Thermal Neutron Cross Section.”
This past May, NETL staff members, Rodrigo Viveros Duran and Tristan Brannon, successfully passed the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Senior Reactor Operator exam.
No registration necessary. All are invited to attend this co-sponsored event on nuclear power in Texas between the KBH Energy Center, OLLI, and UT's Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program on September 15, 2025 from 1:00-3:30PM in the LBJ Auditorium in Sid Richardson Hall on campus.
The Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program at The University of Texas at Austin proudly hosted two hands-on professional development workshops for high school STEM teachers. Held on July 17 and July 24 at the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Lab (NETL) on the Pickle Research Campus, these sessions brought together educators from across Austin and surrounding areas to deepen their understanding of nuclear science and radiation technologies.
Graduate student Nick Kaitschuck makes a poster presentation of research work done with Dr. Landsberger on the optimization of rare-earth elements characterization at the Modern Trends in Activation Analysis conference in Budapest, Hungary May 6-10. Nick also gave an oral presentation on the use of Compton suppression in preparation of cellulose reference materials.
Justine Davidson who received her PhD in spring 2024 has been given a Citation to accompany the Award of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Public Service. Justine is an employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory and spent several in Washington DC was recognized for exceptional public service as Senior Scientific Advisor to the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear Matters, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, from April 2021-April 2024.
