2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Integrating Data Science into the Pipeline Building Toward a Diversified Workforce in Nuclear Energy and Security

Presented at DSA Technical Session 2

A workforce equipped with essential data analytics skills is crucial to maintaining the United States' economic growth and security, especially for nuclear energy industries and non-proliferation. Data analytics skills are in high demand in order to generate data-driven, robust solutions to solve global challenges and support decision-making for stakeholders in nuclear energy and security areas. This paper presents the technical approach that facilitates the integration of fundamental data analytics skills into pipeline building toward a diversified workforce through a suite of well-designed, comprehensive summer enrichment programs for high school, undergraduate and graduate students. The summer programs incorporated lectures, hands-on labs, group projects and/or national lab intern experience. In the last three-year’s implementation, the student assessment and project completion result all showed the effectiveness of the approach in enhancing students’ ability to understand the science foundation, identify real-world problems, analyze data and develop data-driven solutions in nuclear energy and security areas. The feedback from student surveys is also satisfactory and positive. This research is sponsored by Department of Engergy/NNSA and intends to share the project team’s experience and lessons learned with the STEM education community.

Authors

Dr. Xiang Zhao Alabama A&M University [biography]

Dr. Xiang (Susie) Zhao, Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Alabama A&M University, has over 20 years of teaching experience in traditional on-campus settings or online format at several universities in US and aboard. Her teaching and research interests include programming languages, high performance algorithm design, data science, and evidence-based STEM teaching pedagogies. Her recent research work has been funded by DOE, USED, NASA and NSF.
Dr. Mebougna L. Drabo Alabama A&M University [biography]

Dr. Mebougna L. Drabo is currently a professor of Mechanical Engineering at Alabama A&M University (AAMU). He is the chair of the department of Mechanical & Civil Engineering and Construction Management at AAMU. He is also serving as the director of the Alabama EPSCoR Agency for the Department of Energy. He joined AAMU in 2012, leveraging his expertise in teaching and mentoring STEM students while fostering on-campus research and DOE Lab internships. Currently, he directs the DOE/NNSA's Consortium, SPINS and is working on integrating radiation detection systems into cyber manufacturing environments.

His research interests include STEM education, Additive Manufacturing, Thermoelectric Devices for Energy Harvesting, Digital Twinning Technology, Nuclear Radiation Detectors, Nuclear Security and Safety, Small Nuclear Modular Reactors (SMR), Material Characterization (X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy & Infrared Microscopy), Nanotechnology, Data Analytics and Visualization, Biofuels Applications, Computational Fluid Dynamics analysis, Heat Transfer, Energy Conservation in building, and Multi Fuel Optimization.

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