First of all, let me introduce myself. I'm Marisa Bailey. I'm the Acting Deputy Director for NRC's Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research. And it is my privilege to welcome you to RIC and also to especially this afternoon's session, which is on Minority Serving Institutions and their positive impact on the mission of the NRC. This afternoon, we have three institutions that we'll be presenting. And after all the presentations, we'll have a Q&A. We have speakers from New Mexico State University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. But before we get started, I'd like to provide some background information. Let me start with the history of the University Nuclear Leadership Program, or UNLP. The program started in fiscal year 2009 as the Integrated University Program. The program initially supported educational grants. Then in fiscal year 2020, the program was renamed the University Nuclear Leadership Program. UNLP also supports research projects relevant to the agency mission. It's funded at $16 million annually. And non-technical research is also considered under the research announcement for example, projects that would foster the development of innovative community engagement strategies, including incorporation of the principles of equity and environmental justice. The UNLP provides research and development grants along with educational grants to universities or other institutions of higher education. These grants help the agency assess the future landscape of nuclear energy and prepare for upcoming technical challenges. The university-led projects complement the current and future research needs, and also NRC seeks to leverage universities' capabilities through our research and development grants. Since 2009, the NRC has awarded 602 educational grants totaling more than $190 million. 110 grants have been awarded to minority-serving institutions. 176 grants have been to individual faculty members, 151 scholarship grants, 189 fellowship grants, and 86 trade schools and community college scholarship grants. In addition to individual faculty members, the program has supported 5,070 students located in 40 states and Puerto Rico. And since 2020, the NRC has awarded 46 research grants totaling more than $22.7 million to 33 institutions in 25 states. So with that, and without any further delay, I would like to introduce our first speaker from the University of New Mexico. Dr. Minghui Chen is an assistant professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of New Mexico. So Dr. Chen. Thank you. Can you hear me? Thank you so much for the introduction. Let me see a slide. Okay, so I'm Minghui Chen. I'm assistant professor of Nuclear Engineering from the University of New Mexico. Before getting into the technical parts, let me introduce our university here. So we are Hispanic-serving institution. We have about 49.9% for undergraduate students who are Hispanic. And we do have a nuclear engineering department. So we currently have nine turning-track faculty here and then two lectures and then three national lab professors. As for the student enrollments, we have about 100 undergraduate students and then about 60 graduate students, which including about 35 GHD students about 20, maybe more than 20 master students. We are a small department, but we are working all kinds of area here and we do have a G-chain reactor compass. So the support from NRC is extremely positive to our faculty, students, and then the university sector here. So the topic today, which is a multi-phase computational fluid dynamic assimilation for a molten-sauce beer and then aerosol transport. And then next slide. So before we kind of introduce our team here, so we have one postdoc, actually two and one left us last month and he actually worked for the project and we have five PhD students and actually it's working on our area right now, so I didn't miss it here. We have undergraduate student and then we already graduated two students here. I think the slide here is over the motion so it was not updated. It's not the same as the one that's showing on the website, but it's okay. So we do have three big research areas. One is the high-temperature heat sources. We are working on molten-sauce reactors and then high-temperature gas-cool reactors and then the micro-reactors. We are also working on some other areas, including fusion reactors and then next generation concentrated solar power. The second one, which is the high-temperature heat changes. So we are including printed circuit heat changes, two-street-to-tube heat changes and how to call it heat changes. The third big area, which is the thermal energy storage and then advanced power cycles. So we are working on both molten-sauce based and then particle-based thermal energy storage systems. We are also working on the ICO2 power cycle and then three piston-stolening engines. So next slides. So this is the outline of the topic. And then you can see, this is kind of schematic for molten-sauce reactor. Those components are crucial for the molten-sauce and those are one that we are currently working in my lab right now. So we have research going on for the regular cavity cooling system, molten-sauce pumps, intermediate heat changing and then two molten-sauce tanks for the thermal energy storage as well as the secondary heat exchanger, which is from molten-sauce to a water steam generator. And then we're not coming over them. We will just talk about one, which is this more related to safety aspect or that's one which it's currently supported by NRC and then which is the molten-sauce via experiment and simulation work. So we will talk about a little bit of background and motivation and then move to the multi-phase computationless modeling, which in big part will be the CFD, multi-phase CFD simulation basically. And then we have some conclusions. Next slides. Next. So this one is a simplified timeline for molten-sauce reactor development. So it's studying an aircraft reactor experiment in 1954 and then in 1965, the MSRE study operation and then in 1969, the MSRE operation in 1976, the MSRE program would cancel, then in 2002 it was selected at one of the generation four reactors. And then there's a lot of research going on in 2010s, including forward salt high-temperature reactors and then this multiple ERP project and then UPE project supporting this effort. And then at the result in 2016, Keraspar was established and then in 2023, which is last year, Keraspar received NRC permitted for the thermos reactor construction programs. There's not just for one, molten salt is so many molten salts, perhaps. What you can see is basically groupings two big areas. One is for the thermal reactors, the other one, which is for the fast reactor. For thermal reactor, it could be used solid fuel. For solid fuel, it could be pre-prismatic type or it could be pipe-backed. So for pipe-backed, which is as part of the design for pre-prismatic, which is our crazy design. Then for the liquid fuel, it could have three in the apps, one as a donor or converter or it's a, I just see, sorry. So it's breather here, okay? So why molten salts? Next slide. So for the image table, we list some high-temperature heat transfer medium and then a property from three columns. The first three columns, as you can see, like flab salt, chloro salt and solosalt. And then the next one, which is the high-temperature pressure helium. And then we have the liquid matter, which is sodium, which includes sodium, sodium potassium lead, and then bismuth. So when we compare all these things, as you can see for the close or molten salt, it which has relatively high boiling points and then they also have very high molar-match heat capacity, which means it potentially could provide a high-compact reactor design. At 40 sodium, which you know, you can see it's had a relatively low melting point and it's a very high thermal conductivity. For the atom-match high-pressure helium, which you can see here, it's not unless you're at a good point here, but then it's in no gas basically. So it is clear, no clear cut, which one is the best. And then when we move to the next slide, which you can see, we made a joint of density with the temperature and that from the left figure, which you can see only molten salt reactor and the high-temperature gas-cool reactor can operate up to a molar-600 celsius. From the figure on the right-hand side, which is the allowable stress with different material really, and then with temperature. So as you can see after six molar-600 celsius, the allowable stress dramatically reduces, which means for the high-temperature, high-pressure or moderated pressure, it's required for the best matters. And sometimes for the best matters, it's very challenging, very pressing, and then it's also possible that it's not certified. So let's use the molten salt reactor here. And the technique we measure here, it's the molten salt reactor advantage here, it's operating in a very high-temperature and then low-pressure systems. So next slide, which is the molten salts, the topic, which is molten salt sphere. So this is a schematic from the Arkham National Lab with a technical report and then it's showing there's a breach from the molten salt primary loop. As you can see, there's a job rate from the breach from the primary loop and you can see molten salt impinging on the catch pan and then the main stream go down to the JN tank. And the following way, it's had flow, it's sprouting, and then it's usually impinging, it's also suppression. It's had vaporization as well as the heat transfer, radiation heat transfer. Then from the suppression, it had bubble formation, bubble boosting, which generates aerosols and then you have also bubbles that evaporate or condense only condensate. So we wanted to study this phenomenon showing here and which actually next slide. It's very important because the NRC licensing, it's required for some post-racial scenario analysis and validation. And you should know molten salts, sphere accidents, it's unlikely, but then it's primarily kind of for boundary events. So we needed some information like the sphere salt flow, sprouting heat transfer and then some other information. So actually the data that they are required by the vendors to prepare a licensing process and then the data also required for again and then advance the model developments. So some constant cons for the molten salt sphere, which you can see all these to here. So radioactive material dependent from fuel salt due to the sprouting and the suppression. Salt in contact with the atmosphere may result in radio vaporization from the chemical reaction salts on the concrete, which you know, degraded the concrete. Then the salt may also come from the catchpan, which you know, called the catchpan deformation or the collusion potentially will lead to related. And the fuel salt can also pose a critical risk also. So those are we can find from the Dr. Bucham's technical report in the reference. Our next slide. So some thing that some, some, some, some phenomena or you know, a scenario can cause the salts spheromone. It's, you know, it's required a salt, you know, salt it may get freed in a remelting in the primary loop. And then it's called a stress stress on different components, which you potentially can cause damage to the, the components, which you know, ultimately that you salt leakage from the granite. So the gene analysis also is required for this field because you can see it's not basically that the salt actually fall down to the gene. And then, you know, something like this here like the actual cooling system may cause the salt freedom and then previously external power supply if it's down then, and also cause the free zone issues. So next slide. Some results like the showing here, which you can, it's the left figure shows the system that we are modeling. So we use UC Berkeley's FHR design. So we have a reactor that you can see on figure A here. And then we have the cavity and then we have catch pan and then we have a gene tank here. B figure, figure B, figure C, the showing the matching scene as you see here. The right hand side, which you showed the initial result that we got from the simulation. So the top one, which is the velocity and then the bottom one, which is showing the temperature. So we're gonna show the more detailed information later on to the next slide. So to get the initial flow rate boundary, so we use an electrical solution calculation to get the velocity that from the gene hole. So we know the figure show, which is the figure A, which shows the fluid height in the reactor. So the molten salt level in the reactor with the time when there's a gene. And then the figure B shows here, which is the ultralighted velocity versus the time. So you can see the initial velocity, which is the four meter per second and then some other velocity and then the flow rates as you also can see our two bottom two figures. Left hand show you all the equations for calculation. So there's one assumption that for each time step should be larger than the momentum time scale that we are using in the CFD. And then for each time step, we assume it's in steady operation so that we can get the solution here. It's the OD equation, which is equation number six. So we can do the calculation from. Okay, next slide. So as I just mentioned, so more results I can show in this one. So the top left figures that you show here, it's showing the fluoride salts volume from zero to one. And we can only see the Parker effect. So the initial step, you can see there's a little bit of salt going from the hole and then there's a salt actually pinging on the catchpan and then you will go down to the last two steps that you can see the salt actually go along the catchpan impinging on the drain hole and then it's causing the some splashes also there, which will potentially lead to more salt actually appears at that region. The bottom eight figures actually show the salt fraction from zero to 5% and actually you can see more detail the salt vaporization or also potentially also yields. So for the last two steps that you can see, it's basically salt go all the way into the cavity systems. The figures showing on the right-hand side, which is the velocity profile, and then you can see the salt flow down from the hole and then pinging on the catchpan and actually from the left figure, you can see there's some little bit of salt go through on the top side and then go to the left wall of the cavity side and then you also can notice by the two exits, they also have the salt components shown. The bottom ones, these will be the stream line from the salt flow. So it's basically showing very complicated flow behavior. And the next slide please. So this will be the simulation based on using the particle. So we have more micro particle size and then we're using the larger methodology so it's actually, you can see from different terms that the top eight figures shows the top view and then the bottom eight figures actually show in the front view of the particle.  We haven't finished all the testing because it takes so much longer. This actually is three months at calculation average with about 40 million cells. So we continue running our simulation so we can get more results there. What you can see here, the brown dot, which actually it's fixed on the catchpan or the surface and then blue one, which actually is free. So it's basically it's free all around to the cavity there. The takeaway message here is if it's for molten salts with a few fission products, it's potentially will go all the cavity under the molten salts and the supporting structures. So I think this is the last slide and then the next one will be reference and then next one, so thank you. I think it turns out right. Thank you, Dr. Chen. And I see that there are a few questions for you, but as I said earlier, we're gonna hold the questions until all three institutions have provided their presentation. So our next set of speakers are from the University of Notre Dame who did work with the New Mexico State University so we have Yaya Kurama who is a professor of structural engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. We also have Dr. Craig Nutson who is a professor and department head in the Civil Engineering Department at New Mexico State University. Thank you and good afternoon everyone. We regret that we're unable to be there in person but we're very pleased to present about our research project funded by the NRC which is on a new type of modularized construction method for reinforced concrete nuclear building structures. I am Yaya Kurama from University of Notre Dame and I serve as the principal investigator together with my co-principal investigators and I'm at the University of Notre Dame. Our team includes a diverse group of researchers from both Notre Dame and New Mexico State University and in this presentation we'll be discussing how this collaboration has greatly benefited not just the technical and educational outcomes from this project but also strengthened diversity and inclusion. Next slide please. So the primary goal of our research is to improve construction schedules and construction conditions for safety related reinforced concrete nuclear building structures and we're gonna do that by allowing large building modules to be constructed away from the building site and then moved and efficiently connected on site. The most critical locations of a modularized structure are the connections between the modules. These need to provide full strength and stiffness continuity without compromising thermal and radiation shielding. Modularized construction methods have been developed and deployed for steel nuclear building structures. You can see an example in the bottom left image and we have modularization techniques also available for non-nuclear reinforced concrete building structures as you can see on the bottom right image. However, reinforced concrete module connections suitable for the extreme low demands in safety related nuclear building designs currently do not exist. So our project is aiming to address this knowledge gap. Next slide please. So in this project we're focusing on the modularization of reinforced concrete shear walls. These are the most common structural components in a nuclear building infrastructure. You can see them depicted in till color in the image on the top left. Shears walls are also the most critical components for the structural and shielding integrity of nuclear buildings. As shown on the top right image for the plan view of the perimeter shear wall at the corner of the nuclear building, our modularization concept uses a lab connection with a nonlinear or Z-shaped grouted construction tolerance joint in between the modules. The two sides of the connection are clamped together using external steel plates with grouted walls through the wall thickness with no welding necessary to complete the connection. As compared with end-to-end or bot connections using non-nuclear modularized reinforced concrete structures, the lab connection with its nonlinear geometry provides superior mechanical and shielding integrity between the modules. And in the bottom image we're showing how a nuclear building perimeter can be closed rapidly by lapping prefabricated shear modules one after another. Next slide, please. Our project team that contributed to the material in this presentation includes four senior researchers, myself and Dr. Brad Walden serve as Co-PI's at Notre Dame, Dr. Mark Manning who was a research scientist at Notre Dame in the first year of the project recently moved to Los Alamos National Laboratory and Professor Newtston is the Co-PI at New Mexico State University and he will be delivering a portion of this presentation at the middle. Next slide, please. We're also in this project collaborating with Dr. Subash Shinde and Barbara Villarosa of the Notre Dame Center for Sustainable Energy. They've been providing technical and administrative support for the research and the energy is also providing funding opportunities for underrepresented undergraduate students to work as summer interns at Notre Dame through the Vincent P. Slatt Fellowship. Next slide, please. This project has so far also included three civil engineering undergraduates at Notre Dame and three civil engineering undergraduates at New Mexico State University both focusing or all focusing on structural engineering. Four of these students have been from underrepresented groups and now I'll pass the presentation over to Dr. Newtston. He's going to talk about how our collaborator research has benefited diversity and inclusion while advancing the modularization of nuclear reinforced concrete building construction. Next slide, please. So the next portion of this presentation we'll talk about collaboration and specifically how this has benefited diversity and inclusion and vice versa. And as Gino stated, we've got two universities participating in this project, University of Notre Dame and New Mexico State University. Next slide, please. So both universities have diversity, equity and inclusion programs at Notre Dame. The university statement is that they want to foster a culture of belonging collaboration and enhance student enrichment, leadership and career development. NMSU has a similar program and states that they want to foster community and inclusive excellence and create collaborative and cohesive partnerships that will achieve socially just climate and a sense of belonging for our students. Next slide, please. So NMSU is a land grant and Hispanic Serving Institution. As a Hispanic Serving Institution, we must have at least 25% of our enrollment be Hispanic students and at least 50% of our students need to qualify for needs-based title for aid. If you look at the table here for university enrollment by ethnicity, what you'll see is that NMSU actually has 57.6% Hispanic enrollment, so more than double the requirement. And if you looked at our total enrollment for minorities, what you would see is that we're above 60%. So everything is good in terms of reaching a diverse group at New Mexico State University. Next slide, please. Within the College of Engineering, things get a little bit, things change a little bit, but in terms of ethnicity, still quite good, still 55% plus on Hispanic enrollment and still above 60% for minorities as a whole. Where we start to see a gap is on female participation or female enrollment. And what we see is that women are very much underrepresented in engineering, so we're looking at 24.4% in engineering or women. And this is pretty representative of what happens nationally. Next slide, please. Within the Department of Civil Engineering, which is the group within NMSU that is actually participating in this NRC project, we're still about 55% Hispanic enrollment at 56.3%, still about 60% enrollment for minorities as a whole. And we do a little bit better with female enrollment, we're at 33.9%. So we're able to draw a little bit better from our women's students. And the whole idea here is to get these underrepresented students interested in things that are related to the nuclear industry, career paths specifically that are related to the nuclear industry. So if we look back at our reasonably recent graduates, we have two former students who have spent time working on a national enrichment facility, which is in Eastern New Mexico. And currently we have a student that's inter-graduating semester who has interned with Palo Verde nuclear generating station in the Phoenix area and is looking to accept a permanent position with them. Next slide, please. For the students that we've got in our program right now that have participated in this research project, the first is Omar Munoz. He is the one semi-facing us in the photograph. He was funded by a Slap Fellowship at Notre Dame to spend 10 weeks last summer. And the project that he worked on during those 10 weeks was a 3D animation to illustrate the construction sequence of the modular building. At NMSU, we also have Irina Plaxina, who is, she started working on the Collaboratory Research at NMSU during her last semester of her bachelor's degree. Currently she is a master's student in structural engineering. And she's basically doing the thermal expansion measurements for the ground and concrete materials that are used in the construction. Also doing some other materials characterization testing. And then our third student here is Bourbon Ronquillo. He is another undergraduate. He was hired to help Irina Plaxina with her testing in the laboratory. And his funding actually came from the Alliance for Minority Participation, which is an NSF grant aimed at getting minority students involved in research projects. And it is used to compliment research projects throughout the state of New Mexico. It's not specific to NMSU, although the center is housed at New Mexico State University. Bye, please. So the research that we're doing in the laboratory at NMSU is related to the concrete and ground materials. So in the top table, you see the concrete mix design. This was a mix design that was developed under a previous Department of Energy project at Notre Dame. When we went back and looked at their mix designs, this is the one that we liked. So we decided to run this one for this particular project. We're also looking at two grouts that will be used in the grouted connections between the modules. And both of these products that we're looking at are produced by master builders. Next slide, please. So doing some basic materials characterization like compressive strength, but really the big part of the research is postulating that there could be a high temperature event, a rupture pipe of some sort, anything along those lines. So we're looking at how the concrete and the grout and specifically that connection between modules will perform under high temperatures. So in terms of the materials characterization, we're looking at coefficient thermal expansion measurements and going up to about 600 degrees centigrade. And to do that, we're using the furnace and a measurement technique called digital image correlation. We're also looking at shrinkage bond strength between the grout and the concrete, basically anything that would affect the integrity of that grouted joint. And then the last part of the project will have some modeling for thermal degradation of the joint. Next slide, please. So out of the work that we've done so far in the second column of this top table, you'll see the two grouts, the 4316 grout, the 928 grout and the concrete. And what we're doing is looking at coefficients of thermal expansion for these materials. So when you go to the right column, you'll see the coefficient of thermal expansion values. And the grouts have a little bit higher coefficient of thermal expansion than the concrete, but everything is reasonably close. So things are looking at least a little promising there. Next slide, please. And then the last slide that I'm gonna talk about here is the poster that Omar Munoz put together for his SLAT fellowship last summer. Although the text is too small, what you see are the images from his 3D animation of the construction sequence showing how the structure is put together. Next slide, please. And Gina will finish this presentation. All right, thanks, Craig. So in this last section of our presentation, I'll be discussing how our collaborative project has benefited the education and training of the entire research team as well as the research outcomes from our project. The photos here show our research group casting some of the modular reinforced concrete specimens that were tested at Notre Dame, which I'll be discussing in more detail. Next slide, please. In terms of education and training, our project team included undergraduates, the research scientists and faculty advisors, and this allowed participants with different levels of education and experience to interact and learn from each other. This interaction resulted in the professional development of the entire team in not only the technical aspects of the research, but also on project management, networking, and mentorship. The photographs on this slide show additional images of our test specimens being constructed, including concrete finishing, material sampling, and clamping of connection bolts using a calibrated torque wrench. Next slide, please. In our research, we're using an integrated process that is based on sound design, laboratory testing, modeling, analysis, and evaluation. This process starts by initial conceptualization supported by 3D printing and computer visualization, and subsequent prototype design and development for our modular laboratory specimens. A state of practice non-modular companion specimens are also designed, tested, and analyzed for benchmarking purposes. For our first two series of specimens tested to date, we considered horizontal slices taken out of a shear wall in a nuclear building as depicted on the top left image. These specimens were fabricated in our laboratory at quarter length scale and then subjected to mechanical load testing as well as materials evaluation. Analysis and comparison of the test data against numerical model and design predictions led to the validation of our design, construction, and analysis approaches and techniques. Ultimately, this integrated approach also provided excellent opportunities for the education and training of our researchers who worked on these tasks. Next slide, please. These photographs show further details about our modular construction technique, counterclockwise from top left. The images show our forms and reinforcement, cast modular components, grouting of the tolerance joint and cured joint prior to placement and clamping of the external connection plates. Next slide, please. Here's a 10 second video, if you can play that video, please, of one of our tests at 100 times the actual speed on the left hand side. This specimen was tested at a simply supported beam with concentrated loading immediately to the right of the connection, creating highly shear critical loading conditions on the connection. The performance of the specimen demonstrated the ability of the connection to provide full mechanical stiffness and strength continuity between the modules with ultimate failure developing outside of the connection and no significant damage in the connection region as designed. Next slide, please. Our learning process in this project included testing of a total of 12 specimens to date, analyzing a number of key design variables for the connections, including reinforcement, grout strength, clamping force and steel-to-steel surface conditions. This resulted in the successful validation of design of materials, clamping, and reinforcement details, as well as continuum finite element models with their predictions as shown on the right hand side. Next slide, please. So looking at a summary of our presentation, this project has been providing relevant and wide-ranging research experiences for technical staff and students from gender and ethnically diverse backgrounds. Our multi-institution collaboration, including a minority-serving university, has been promoting access and opportunities for underrepresented students, and these students are being exposed to potential career paths in the nuclear industry. The research tasks conducted to date have also demonstrated that our novel lab connection will allow safe modularization, reducing costs and improving construction efficiency for the next-generation nuclear power plants. Next slide, please. Our acknowledgements are to the NRC for providing this funding and NRC staff for administering this project, as well as to end the energy and material donors for our research. Next slide, please. With that, I'd like to conclude our presentation, and we'll be very happy to answer questions at the very end. Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Kurama and Dr. Knudsen. Again, I'd like to remind everyone that if you'd like to ask a question, you can use the QR code, or you can also use the submit question if you are participating online. You can use that feature. Our next set of speakers are from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. We have Professor Silvina Cancelos, who is an assistant professor in mechanical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico. Ms. Desiree Rivera-Borjes, a senior undergraduate student at the University of Puerto Rico who majors in chemical engineering. We also have Robert Roche Rivera, who is a program manager at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and is currently serving as an adjunct professor at the University of Puerto Rico. And Mr. Marcos Rolón Acevedo, who is a structural engineer at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research, and he is also an adjunct professor at the University of Puerto Rico. So with that, I'll turn over to Ms. Cancelos. Thank you, Marisa, for the introduction. And I first would like to go over the next slide, please. So I would like first to go over a quick overview of the College of Engineering, so you know how it's our university. So next slide, please. So I'd like to say that we are proud of our program, Separation Keystream. For example, Mechanical Engineering, that's my department since the 1960s. It has been accredited by AVID, and we were able to manage that accreditation throughout the years. The same thing with the other engineering programs. So next slide, please. So just to give you an idea of our numbers provided by the American Society for Engineering Education, we are very well-ranked in terms of undergraduate involvement. We are 31st on that. We are also well-ranked in the total degrees awarded to capital engineers. Our position is 21, and that's right, engineering 24, the capital engineering 21, and the computer engineering 49. And I would like to just highlight that in 2021, that's when this study was done. We were number 11 in the amount of PhD degrees awarded to women. So next slide, please. In total, for the fall of 2023, we had 4,907 students enrolled in our engineering programs. That represents 46% of the total UPRM involvement, and 27 of those were female, and two probably are 57 were graduate students. So next slide, please. Also, we had a very good placement of statistics. 81% of our undergraduate students have a job by the time of graduation, and 92% after six months of graduation. There is a very small variation between different engineering programs. Next slide, please. This slide shows an idea of our funding sources, both federal and local governments. So we have funding from NASA and IH, and of course there, it's the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and that's what's making us grow in terms of nuclear engineering. So next slide, please. And this slide shows the corporate funding sources, and among those we can see Dominion that has a nuclear power plant, and also we have the Nuclear and Naval Nuclear Labs, and the National Labs to highlight from this list. And let's go to the next slide, please. These are the companies that are hiring our students. So the ones that are taking most of our students are in the aerospace industry. However, we are seeing a growth in nuclear-related topics as well. We see NAPC there, we see Southern Company, we see Georgia Power and Dominion Energy that are also hiring a lot of our students. So go to next slide, please. And I wanted to highlight that the UPRM has a history in nuclear that started in the 1960s with BODOS. BODOS, a BODOS in Nuclear Superheater Reactor, started its construction in 1964, and it operated until 1968. It was just to test the concept. After that, it was the commission, and most of the high-level waste was transported to the mainland. Also in the 1970s, Puerto Rico had a nuclear center that the University of Puerto Rico, Maya West had two nuclear reactors, a bigger nuclear reactor and an L-77 training reactor, along with the masters in nuclear engineering. So all that ended in the 80s with the decommissioning of the nuclear reactor and all educational activities in nuclear just when provided anymore by the university. That happened until 2006 when several professors of the university decided to start providing education in nuclear engineering topics, and they created a series of courses to provide the students with that knowledge. And that was very successful, but unfortunately that did only for a couple of years because we had some difficulties, financial difficulties at the university that did not allow us to continue with that. But then in 2019, things started changing, specifically after we came, Maria, when we had a very strong electricity crisis, really. We worked for months without energy. And so younger generations started seeing nuclear power as an alternative. And so there was a nuclear alternative project, a group of Puerto Ricans that decided to do a study on the applicability or the possibility of having nuclear reactors in the island. They started giving seminars, I mean across the island, and the students from the University of Puerto Rico felt motivated by them. And they decided to create a mayonnaise chapter at the university. And that all happened in 2019 along with several fellowship grants provided by NRC that made our graduate student population to start working on research projects related to nuclear. But let's move to the next slide, please. So I just wanted to highlight some of our student achievements thanks to the funding from the NRC. And let's move to the next slide, please. For some representations were given at the NAA conference in 2023 at the ANS conference. As well, we also presented at the American Association of Radon Scientists in 2023 that was an effort with EPA that we started working on measuring radon in Puerto Rico. We are also going to present the manuscripts were accepted for the Thermal Influenced Engineering Conference in April this year. And also manuscripts were accepted for the ANS conference in this summer and a poster for the West Management Symposium in 2024. So in this slide, some of the pictures of our students presented are shown. So we'll go to the next slide, please. Some of our NRC fellows are William Beos. He's here with me in this room, Juan Perez. He's also here. Andres Gonzalez, he graduated with the master's and he was funded by NRC. He is currently working at G. Vernova in the nuclear part of the company at Christian Ramos. He's working also, he's doing a master's with us in mechanical engineering funded by the NRC. And he's working on a means to remove radon from homes by, he's right now making the ANS modeling of he's trying to see how radon is fusing inside the room when you have ventilation and you also have some parts of the room where you have a filtration systems to remove radon. And then Rafael, Rafael is doing a PhD in mechanical engineering. He is here also in this room. And I think I skipped Juan who got a master's in mechanical engineering being funded by the NRC and is now doing a PhD in mechanical engineering. So let's go to next slide, please. This slide is a compendium of everything the students are working on at the graduate level. So the video is showing bubbles on molten salt. That was a mixture of potassium chloride and sodium chloride and the bubbles were produced by electrolysis. So we were funded by the Department of Energy in order to build a facility to visualize bubbles being formed in molten salts. So Rafael is working on that. And then Andres was working also with molten salts trying to obtain the boiling curve for the potassium chloride, sodium chloride. In this slide we can also see at the top left a result of a modeling that William is doing. William is a master's student. He is trying to design a neutron detector that has the capability to determine the direction in which the neutrons are coming from. And then we see at the bottom left an image of the simulations that are being conducted by Christian. That picture shows the concentration of radon in a room where you have on the left at the center a small window and on the right at the top another window. So air is moving through the room. However, there's still a high spot of concentration close to the floor due to the poor ventilation in that part. So let's move to the next slide, please. I also wanted to add that thanks to all the initiatives that are happening at the university right now. We are having more industries coming in that are for the nuclear sector that are coming to recruit. So last year, for example, we had NPR. That was the first time we had them here. And Oriano contacted us because they wanted to have internships with our students. So let's go to the next slide. And I think that now I have to pass it over to Desiree, she's with the American Nuclear Society chapter of the UPRL. Thank you very much, Silvina. I'm Desiree. I'm one of the co-founders of the American Nuclear Society student section here at the University of Puerto Rico. Can we go to the next slide, please? So our student section's mission is to increase interest and understanding in nuclear science within the Puerto Rican community. And our vision is to become trustworthy, credible advocates within Puerto Rico. Our student section was founded in November 2019, roughly two years after Hurricane Maria left the island mostly without electrical power for several months. And a couple of months after a particularly inspiring seminar offered by the Nuclear Alternative Project to which several students from the university attended. After this seminar, we were inspired to start the student section and become active within the nuclear industry. Our student section has grown significantly over the last five years. We are currently recognized at a national level as one of the largest and most active student sections. We were awarded the Samo Glaston Award in 2021 and 2022, which is getting to the most successful or outstanding student section out of over 60 sections at a national level. And we were again awarded the second place of this award in 2023. Next slide, please. We have a pretty varied membership. As of January 2023, we have a little over 80 members out of which 70% are male and 30% are female. I believe that last year we had up to 46% of our members were female. So we have had a lot of variation but definitely some very successful results within that. A little over 98% of our students identify as Hispanic or Latino and a little over 73% are enrolled in engineering, primarily chemical engineering. Most students are juniors and seniors, but we do have a couple of projects going on to try to get more freshmen involved within the organization. And we do track our members' interests. We have seen that most students are interested, particularly in nuclear fusion and nuclear fission, but we have seen students interested in many different applications across the board. Next slide, please. I'd like to talk a little bit about a couple of the most important programs and projects that we have going on right now. We have the K-12 nuclear school visitation program. This was started by our students in 2020. We have impacted over 460 students with our school workshops. So we'll go to schools, bring educational workshops regarding nuclear sciences to teach children about these topics that are normally not covered in Puerto Rican school science curriculums. We have the nuclear engineering curricular sequence project, which was basically just the students from the organization getting together to request the university to start bringing back all of those nuclear engineering courses that were once given roughly in the 70s. So currently the university is providing two different nuclear engineering courses as electives. Those have been provided by Robert and Marcos, which we'll be talking a little bit more about that later on. And currently over 90 students here at the UPRM have been impacted by this project. And lastly, we have the Puerto Rico nuclear history awareness program as Dr. Sabiana Cancelos mentioned earlier. Puerto Rico has a huge and very impactful nuclear history that's very rich and a lot of people don't know about it, including the nuclear reactors at Bonus in Rincón and here within the university. So we just kind of want to raise awareness to people, let them know that Puerto Rico has a history here. So far over 55 people have been impacted by our visit to the boiling nuclear super heater reactor located in Rincón. Next slide, please. And I also wanted to talk a little bit about the NRC contributions to these student-driven efforts, mostly through making nuclear engineering education a little bit more accessible by providing resources to conduct pilot nuclear engineering classes and providing technical seminars from NRC industry professionals at our university that has greatly benefited the student body and ANS members. Also, nuclear industry minority inclusion and growth, we have seen not just the NRC, but a lot of companies in the nuclear industry in general bringing more career opportunities, including internships, early career programs, full-time opportunities, fellowships, research support, and so much more to the university, particularly over the last years. And by increasing nuclear visibility in Puerto Rico, primarily from the key visit from the NRC's chair, Christopher T. Hansen, he came to the university, I believe it was about a year and a half ago, where we had a meeting with the university's dean and faculty, as well as some of the students and more active members of the community to talk about how we can start including more minorities, specifically women and people of Hispanic descent within these initiatives. Next slide, please. And lastly, I'd like to delve a little bit into some student surveys we have conducted. Our section definitely tracks student interest in different areas of nuclear engineering, particularly their likelihood to enroll in specific nuclear engineering courses or within a nuclear engineering curricular sequence at the university. So far, we have had amazing results. There's definitely a significant amount of students interested. We have conducted these surveys. I served for about the last three or four years and we have identified consistently that each semester we have at least 100 students that are interested in enrolling in a regular sequence in nuclear sciences. Next slide, please. I'd like to turn it over now to Marco Centro-Hort, which will be talking a little bit more about the nuclear engineering curriculum at the University of Puerto Rico. Thank you. Thank you, Desiree. We are excited to be here today to discuss the ongoing developments and plans for the nuclear engineering curriculum at the UPRM. The NRC and UPRM partnered to form a nuclear engineering curriculum at the university. My colleague, Robert Roche Rivera and I were appointed to serve as adjunct professors starting in the fall semester of 2023. Our participation in this position was facilitated through a rotation in SBCR, the Office of Small Business and Civil Rights. And I'm proud to say that both our Home Office of Nuclear Regulatory Research and SBCR have played instrumental roles in supporting the efforts at UPRM and we are very grateful for the opportunity to serve in this capacity. Next slide, please. In the fall of 2023, we offered two courses on the subjects of fundamentals of nuclear science and engineering and nuclear power plant engineering. The courses were delivered in a hybrid format with 29 and 13 students enrolled in each course and the combined enrollment of these courses increased during the spring semester. We find this to be an excellent sign of the growing interest in nuclear engineering among students at UPRM. We also worked on some exciting activities to further engage the students at UPRM and provide them with valuable learning experiences. One of these activities was a seminar for the ANS student section entitled Nuclear Reactors 101, which was very well received. Students also had the opportunity to go on a field trip to bonus the commissioned boiling nuclear superheated reactor site in Rincon Puerto Rico. Additionally, as part of the recruiting efforts in our agency, we welcomed NRC staff to both of our classes who delivered an orientation about the job opportunities available at the NRC. The participation in the courses and supporting activities have shown great promise and we are excited to see how this effort continues to grow and develop. And with this, I'll turn it over to Robert to continue the presentation. Thank you, Marcos. And if we could go to the next slide, please. So this semester, Marcos and I have continued teaching the two courses that Marcos highlighted in the previous slide. We've also been enhancing the course materials based on last semester's experience and in collaboration with Professor Silvina, today with us in the presentation, as well as Professor Gustavo Gutierrez, we've taken steps towards including these courses in the university catalog. Regarding our main goal of the current effort, which is to develop a minor in nuclear engineering at UPRM, so toward this end, we've collaborated with, like I said a moment ago, with Professor Silvina and Professor Gustavo Gutierrez on the proposal for the nuclear engineering minor and which is about to be entered into the formal review process at UPRM. And what we're seeing is a lot of excitement and interest at the university from both the faculty members and the students and it just seems that this is the opportune moment for the nuclear engineering minor to flourish and to thrive at UPRM. In summary, so as discussed throughout the presentation, the NRC and UPRM have had a relationship over several years. The presentation also showcased the positive impact of such relationship on the student body and the resulting fruits and contributions back to the nuclear engineering field. So more recently, that relationship has been strengthened via the SBCR's Minority Service Institutions Program which has provided the opportunity for both Marcos and me to serve as adjunct professors at the university and this arrangement continues to position UPRM as a direct diversity pipeline of highly qualified individuals, not only for NRC but also for industry. The presentation also highlighted the bonus reactor site of which you can see a picture here on this slide and really that structure that you see there really serves as a testament of the nuclear history in Puerto Rico and an inspiration of future endeavors at UPRM. With that, I would like to say on behalf of Professor Silvina and other faculty members, Desiree, Mariana, Marcos and me, we wanna say thank you to the NRC, thank you to SBCR's Minority Serving Institutions Program for making this opportunity possible and thank you all for your attention. So thank you, Professor Cancelos, Ms. Borges, Mr. Rivera and Mr. Acevedo for the presentation and before we get to the questions, please let's give all of the speakers a hand for the very good presentations. So we've got plenty of time for questions and so keep them coming. We have actually a number of questions and let me go ahead and get started. So this first question is for everyone. So whoever wants to jump in, how does the NRC sponsored grant research, how does the NRC sponsored grant research, oh my gosh, may have affected your students' interest in a career at the NRC or in the industry in general. So how has the program affected your students' interest in a career in nuclear? Anybody wanna go first? I'll go first, that's all right. Sure. I would say at New Mexico State, because we're in civil engineering, the exposure that students receive typically to the nuclear industry is minimal, very close to zero. So having an opportunity to work with the NRC has been tremendous. Every student that has worked on our projects sees infinitely more of the nuclear industry than they did before. So in my case, specifically at New Mexico State University, it's profound difference. Thank you. Does anybody else want to answer that? Hey, I would like to say something about that too. For our university, the impact of the NRC fellowship has been tremendous. I think that our students doing research in nuclear-related topics has been motivated under-graduates students to also want to do research in nuclear to come to me and ask me about possible jobs in the nuclear industry. I've seen students that have taken the courses that Marcos and Robert have been teaching, that they had opportunities then to go to the industry and work, and then I have seen people that come and tell me that what we are doing has had a tremendous impact because they see the difference in the students. They see how now they have that huge motivation to go and work for these industries. And also it's all, everything is important. I mean, if we target only a regular development without doing research, it doesn't have the same impact. When the undergrad students see graduate fellows working and they see the labs and they see how, I mean, the stuff they do and they feel more motivated to go for nuclear. So I think that everything together has a tremendous impact but the NRC fellowships are crucial because that's what's showing the rest, what can be done. So I really appreciate the help that you have given us. It could have been impossible otherwise. Thank you. Okay. I can go next. Okay, go ahead, Dr. Chan. Yeah, so I just mentioned during my talk, so the NRC grant actually had tremendously positive effects on our students here. First one will be the financial support. So we do have the NRC scholarship and the fellowship and those are we actually covering the tuition office and then leaving expense for students so they can stay in nuclear field. Also at R&D research grants, it's providing research opportunity for both graduate students as well as undergraduate students. So students can get hands-on experience under the support of the project. The next one, certainly a student can do some experiments, do research work and they have some published work so they can go conferences so they can get more like professional developments and then later on, actually now, it's very excellent for the career of the investments because they lower all these skills and knowledge and what is happening certainly to do the research work in the nuclear engine. So those are the things that are just kind of very simplified in case. I can add a few comments about Notre Dame also, the impact at Notre Dame if we have time. Sure. So yeah, I am in the civil engineering department as well and we don't have a nuclear engineering department in the College of Engineering at Notre Dame. So our students are normally not exposed to nuclear infrastructure, nuclear design at all but I do teach a reinforced concrete design class to our juniors and usually in that class, I bring examples of my research projects and this one in particular peaks their interest quite a bit because they can see the impact that they can make to the nuclear energy field and the needs of that field, especially in terms of the huge construction costs for them to see that you don't need to be a materials engineer or a scientist to actually contribute to our mission of making nuclear energy safer and less expensive. They can see that and that makes a huge impact. Thank you. Thank you for all those responses. Let's move on to the next question which is for Dr. Chen. Are you tracking how well your minority students are adjusting to corporate America? If yes, what are some of the challenges your minority students have faced in corporate America and how did your school address these challenges? Can you see that question? I'm sorry about that. Sure. Basically, are you tracking how well your minority students are adjusting to corporate America? And if yes, can you talk about some of those challenges and how your school might have addressed it to prepare them for those challenges? So we, well, I'm answering it. We typically don't check lead parts. It's, this is actually the fourth year or fifth year in my career here and then this is the second year for the project. So we don't, so short answer is we don't, sorry. Okay, thank you. The next question is for you, Dr. Knudsen, because you talked about the women still being underrepresented in your engineering program. What efforts do you have in place to generate more interest amongst women to enter into the engineering program? No, we recruit heavily and it's not specific to women. We recruit across our community, really, Southern New Mexico and some in Northern New Mexico and surrounding states. So I would say in, for the most part, we recruit mostly ethnicity. So more likely Hispanic than anything else in our area. But something like 52% of the students that we are recruiting are female. In terms of tailoring that recruiting to female students, there are some minor things that we do. In general, what we're told is that when men choose their major, they want to contribute to something. When women choose their major, they want to make a difference. And what we see in civil engineering is that environmental engineering specifically draws better than say structural engineering for women. And largely it's because that's where they most easily see that they can make a difference. So in terms of our recruiting efforts, that's really the only goal that we have in place to try to recruit more. There are a lot of efforts nationally to make STEM fields more accessible and more appealing to girls. We as an institution, though, don't really recruit at the level that those programs are implemented for. Hopefully that answers the question. It does, thank you very much. So a similar but kind of maybe opposite question for Dr. Cancelos, because you seem to be fairly successful. You mentioned that UPR was number 11 in terms of granting PhDs to women in the engineering field. So what do you think you're doing to generate women's interest in STEM? Okay, that's a tricky question because the numbers are good for some engineering disciplines and not that good for others. But for example, the numbers indicate that in technical engineering, like more than 50% are women. In mechanical engineering, however, we have the lowest percentage of women and it's about 17, 18%. The College of Engineering is doing a lot of the 40 recruiting women for all the engineering disciplines. Typically, we organize summer camps for women. So we have young girls that come here to stay for a week and we show them all the possibilities in mechanical engineering and other engineering disciplines as well. That helps a lot. That summer camp is very successful and they, I mean, a lot of women that are in our program in mechanical engineering, they keep telling me that they are here thanks to that summer camp. So I think that has a huge impact. But also we have associations and those associations organize activities during the weekends for young ladies that go to, I mean, in high school or even middle school, sometimes they are as young as nine-year-old and they come here, they learn how to use a 3D printer, they learn how to do these LEGOs that you can control with our doings. So they can see what they can do and typically that makes an impact. So I cannot say that we do anything else other than these efforts now with the younger girls. So I hope that answers the question. Yes, thank you so much. So the next question is for Dr. Kurama. In an effort to advance NRC's mission through diversity, equity and inclusion, did you make any distinction between Afro-Latinos and white Latinos when evaluating admission applications and matriculation? We tried to increase the number of applicants from those groups. The group that you mentioned is also, just like female applications are on the low side. So we do take that into consideration but we have not been seeing a lot of applicants from the Afro-Latina. I guess the Latino part is different actually, I should correct myself. With New Mexico State University's involvement, we have been engaging with students from the Latino community quite a bit but not the African-American community. Thank you. Similar question to Professor Cancelos. Are you making that distinction between the Afro-Latinos and white Latinos in terms of acceptance and matriculation rates? The most of the students that we have here are Puerto Ricans. We have some international students that come from South America, mainly Colombia, Peru, some from Argentina but not that many nowadays. So really we don't have a big population of the students coming from other countries. At some times we were having countries from China and India, students coming from China and India but now I've seen that lately they haven't been applying to graduate programs. In terms of undergraduate students, they are mainly from the island, mostly Puerto Ricans or Puerto Ricans that moved to the mainland but their kids are coming here to study. So really we have an issue like that there. I see it as an opportunity. We should try to expand our vision and try to get students from other parts of the US to come study here. The tuition is cheaper, so we have an opportunity there to increase the diversity in our institution. Thank you. The next question is for Ms. Borges. Does your A&S student section develop the lessons for the K-12 NSVP and do you use lessons plans to develop or do you use lessons plans that are developed by other organizations? Yeah, so actually the American Rooker Society at a national level already has lesson plans that are available for free on their website. So for some of our events we have relied on those. However, I think that for most of our activities we have either adapted some of that information to be in Spanish to make it more accessible for the local population or we've had students that have volunteered to create brand new material from scratch based on different topics that they're interested in. Okay, thank you. Next question is for Robert and Marcus. You can take turns answering this one. Can you talk about the challenges that you've encountered with building the nuclear engineering curriculum and do you envision getting support not just from the NRC in the future, but also from industry in building that curriculum? Right, I think so over the years there've been some activities ongoing, the courses were taught many years ago and then now we're restarting that and I really, rather than challenges at this point that I would like to say that I think that all of those activities that have already taken place have contributed to where we are today and where we are today is that, like we said during our presentations, we see a lot of excitement, we see a lot of awareness, we see that the awareness have increased greatly like Desiree was just saying a moment ago, like that ANS student chapter is just like an amazing again testament of how educated the student community has become in this area of nuclear engineering field. So I think all of those activities have contributed to this moment in time and it's just seen really that this is the right time and we see a bright future ahead, not only wanna highlight, not only from the student, but definitely from Professor Silvina and other faculty members and we have high hopes and expectations that this is gonna thrive, move forward. We, Marcos and I, we collaborated with Professor Silvina so we developed the proposal that's about to enter into the formal review process so we just have high hopes that this is gonna move forward in a very successful way, successful manner. Yes, I think instead of challenges, I've seen a lot of support from the professors and then also the students, as Robert mentioned, they have been very interested in everything, every, the lessons, the ANS student section, I would say has done a lot and it has been very significant that they are also giving awareness not only to the students in the university but even people in the island so that also plays a big part. Thank you. The next question is for Dr. Chen but I think I'd like to ask everyone this question. So great programs on science and engineering. How much exposure do the students get to the NRC licensing process including environmental justice considerations? But Dr. Chen, you can answer that first but I think if anybody else wants to weigh in. So we do have a teaching reactors here and then students can have some experience using the teaching reactor and then some students actually can get a chain to operate the reactor and then some of them actually, we're starting to get some experience about the NRC licensing experience. I would say from the cost points of view, we, I don't think we cover about the NRC licensing topic in the curriculum but then students, just one example for the senior design cluster we typically ask the student to consider the NRC licensing process for new reactivity times and then safety aspects. So some, not some of them. Thank you. And if anybody else would like to answer that question and particularly talk to any kind of exposure to environmental justice considerations. I can make some comments about Notre Dame. So at the University of Notre Dame we have an energy studies minor that is run through the College of Science and our Notre Dame Center for Sustainable Energy. I can't pinpoint the exact curricular courses on these topics, but I'm pretty sure that they're covered as part of that energy studies minor. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, so let's go to the next question and this is for you, Robert. What's the most rewarding part of teaching at the University of Puerto Rico, my guess, teaching those students? Oh, no, I very much appreciate that question. So it is really priceless, the opportunity and just knowing that we are able, like Marcos and myself, we're able to give back what we've received. Received meaning having the privilege of working here at the NRC, having been trained in the different nuclear engineering courses and just going through the NRC training program and just being able to give back to where we came from. It's extremely rewarding, okay? And we found it to be priceless. And again, I know I speak for both of us here that we're just beyond grateful for the opportunity and seeing the interest from the students, okay? Seeing how motivated they are, how they are hungry to learn more about this area, this engineering field. And just seeing the expectations that they have of what can, of the possible opportunities in the island or at an island level or opportunities for themselves in this field is extremely rewarding. So, yeah. All right, so Marcos, you can add to that, but there's also a specific question for you. What does the UPRM, what does UPRM see as the future for the Ajeong Professor role? So, as Rohr was saying, it has been a very rewarding experience and I think, you know, just being there brings back a lot of memories. I've known Robert since I was in college, so it has been great being back and just in that capacity of teaching other students. And regarding the Ajeong Professor experience, I think it has been very rewarding for us personally as well because we've learned to communicate a little bit more to big groups and it has been very, very interesting experience as I mentioned before. Also, I think our presence there has contributed to all these efforts at the University of Puerto Rico and there are some professors that are interested. There's one professor that comes to one of our classes and we are very happy that he's there because our intention is that this program moves forward and it's self-sustained. After we leave this opportunity, then this can continue and hopefully it grows and to something that makes a good and big contribution for our nation and for the island as well. Thank you. All right, so I think we have time for one more question and so I'm gonna make this one for everyone. During the grant research, have you experienced any challenges and do you have any recommendations on how to, for the NRC on how to address them and any recommendations in general for the program? Anybody wanna take that? I'll take that. I mean, as far as our project is concerned, our biggest challenge so far has been actually recruiting suitable graduate students for our project. This is an issue that has risen, I think overall in engineering in the United States, especially after the COVID pandemic, especially in the civil engineering side, construction side, the industry is very strong and students and the industry is paying very well so students have wonderful opportunities to go work in the industry. So we're seeing fewer qualified students wanting to pursue the PhD. Again, nothing to do with NRC or this particular project but in general there's a difficulty and this is not an ordinary issue either. It's a general difficulty across the board in the United States of finding good students for pursuing the PhD. Okay, Dr. Chen, I saw you nod your head. Did you wanna add to that? Yes, we had the same similar issues here but then for my projects, I had one issue which is it's unexpected. So we, the computational resources, it turns out it's extremely high. So the simulation case that I just mentioned during my presentation, it's 40 million sales and it's changing the simulation. So we use like 120 computer CPU cores but then it taking like half a year and I know we still haven't finished all the computation. I don't have any suggestion for it. I think it's a great program to support MSIs. It's certainly, it's very, very positive in fact impact our program here. Yeah, but then we try and you get some resources from National Labs so we can successfully complete the simulation and then publish results. Thank you. If I can add something, I don't know if we have the time. Yeah, we have a couple of minutes. Okay, I would like to say that for us it's also hard to find a good PhD students. We have some issues. I mean, it's hard to find them everywhere but especially here, I think it's more complicated because we lose a lot of the students that go to the mainland to do the PhD. They have a lot of opportunities as being Hispanic and so it's hard for us to find them to stay here. So I found that this NRC fellowship it's excellent because it gave me the opportunity to pay them well basically and try to convince them that staying here can make a difference because they get the payment as well as they get it in the main lab but also they have the opportunity to do the research here and attract undergrad students that can see what they do. It's a suggestion for the program. I think the program is excellent. We don't have many sources of funding in nuclear. There are few sources, so that's a problem. For us in particular, the only thing that it was hard for me was to have the time to recruit students. So when we first got the NRC fellowship award we had to spend like six months or more in attracting students to come and work with us under the fellowship. And because of that, we lost some time. So it might be useful if we can get maybe an additional year or something to recruit students and after that expect that they do the work. In other institutions where they, I mean, when they have a nuclear engineering degree in place for them, it might be easier because you already have the students and you just need to provide them the funding. But since we don't have the students and we have to recruit them, sometimes it's more complicated. But other than that, I think it's an excellent program and I always like, if I have the opportunity to showcase how you deal with this program, I do it because I think it's very important that you continue with it and it's very successful, I think. So... Thank you. Thank you so much. And that pretty much brings us to the end of the program. I'd like to thank all of the speakers, virtual and in-person and also the audience for your attention and for all your good questions. Thank you so much.


Ever since I started this series, I've gotten requests for an episode about The Legend of Korra. Now that it's available on Netflix, those demands have only gotten more frequent. As much as I loved the show, I kept running into the same problem I had with its predecessor, Avatar The Last Airbender. There are so many important themes crammed into the series that it's almost impossible to pick one and write a tight, focused episode. But just like what happened with Avatar, tragic circumstances have led me to finally give The Legend of Korra the attention it deserves. What do we do as a society when certain points of view become illegal? Thanks to the First Amendment, we're fortunate that criminalized speech is mostly theoretical in the United States. While our courts have established a few highly specific exceptions to this rule, nowhere else on Earth are the protections for freedom of expression and freedom of belief, or lack thereof, as robust as they are in the US. To my mind, this is unquestionably a good thing, but not everybody agrees. For years now, we've seen calls for various kinds of censorship, most frequently against hate speech, even though that term will never have a clear or consistent definition. But recently, we've seen the state of our public discourse become so divisive, so politicized, and so uncivil that now, apparently, wrong thinking is enough to be labeled as a domestic terrorist, and a growing number of people in the US are pushing state censorship as the solution. And that's exactly what happens in The Legend of Korra. This episode will contain spoilers for Korra's first season, so if you haven't seen it yet, go ahead and binge it all right now. Then come back here, hit that subscribe button, and get ready for some potentially uncomfortable conversation on this short edition of Out of Frame. The Legend of Korra is set about 70 years after Avatar, The Last Airbender. After a full and eventful life that included the founding of the bustling metropolis of Republic City, where elemental benders of all types, as well as non-benders from all nations are free to live together, Avatar Aang passed away peacefully and the Avatar cycle resumed. The new Avatar is a girl from the Southern Water Tribe. She grew up at the South Pole, trained and closely monitored by the members of the Order of the White Lotus, so when she finally has an opportunity to visit Republic City in order to learn airbending from Aang's son Tenzin, she jumps at the chance. She's dreamed of Republic City her whole life, imagining it as a place of commerce and culture, innovation, and excitement. And it is, but it's not exactly the gleaming utopia she thought it would be. It's a real city, filled with real people who have real problems. There's poverty and homelessness, crime and wealth disparities that she's never seen before. And there's simmering unrest and resentment between the benders and the non-benders. The anti-bender movement, which calls itself the Equalists, is stirring up trouble in the city. At first, it's just talk and rallies, but not long after Korra arrives, the Equalists and their mysterious leader, Aman, escalate to kidnapping and, somehow, taking away people's bending abilities. But instead of attempting diplomacy or even a counter-narrative campaign, the City Council creates a special task force to flush out the Equalists. Of course, the City Council is made up of benders, so the Equalists declare that this is just more bigotry against non-benders, and it's hard not to see their point. It's a dramatic opening to the series, but for a kid's show released almost a decade ago, it all feels extremely relevant to what's going on in the world right now. Here in the real world, we've been dealing with a number of the same types of problems as Republic City. America is prosperous, a hotspot for exciting innovations and advancements, and a place where people from all over the world come to create a better life for themselves and their families. But there are problems. All of the recent acts of violence we've seen demonstrate a complete lack of willingness on either side to engage in actual conversation with each other. And while I find much of the ideological basis for everyone's anger to be factually wrong and often morally repugnant, the answer is not, and has never been, an outright ban on bad thoughts or speech. Out of Frame is based around art, culture, and big ideas, and I've made it abundantly clear in multiple episodes how important I consider freedom of thought and expression to be. Even in light of the Capitol attack on January 6th, that opinion hasn't changed. This is why I find it incredibly alarming that there is a concerted effort to classify people in this country who merely said the wrong ideas as domestic terrorists. We've seen what expanding that label can do to civil liberties already, and to apply it to people who have not acted to physically threaten or harm anyone is unconscionable. Let me make something very clear here. Speech is not terrorism. It can be upsetting, enraging even. Tons of ideas are horrible, racism, sexism, religious bigotry, fascism and communism, complete garbage, but as long as these ideas are expressed peacefully, no government or individual has any business countering it with coercive or violent action, and doing so will only create bigger problems for everyone. In Republic City, the Council refuses to engage with the equalists in any way other than through coercive tactics, and they could have. Newspapers and radios exist in this world, and could easily have been used to acknowledge that the equalists had some valid points regarding their political representation, bender-led criminal gangs and social inequality, while still challenging their conclusions. The leaders of Republic City could have highlighted their respect for the entrepreneurial achievements of non-benders, or found ways to show that everyone is facing many of the same social issues and needs to address them together. Engaging legitimate complaints brought up by the equalists would not only have shown everyone that the council members aren't the bigots they're being made out to be by Amman, but also that they're actually trying to build a society that treats benders and non-benders with equality under the law. Instead, they choose to outlaw the equalist ideology and crack down on anyone who seems vaguely sympathetic to it. Unsurprisingly, these actions only succeed in igniting a fiery civil war. Politicians can market the criminalization of thinking certain thoughts and speaking certain words as protecting the vulnerable all they want, but this power will do what power always does, corrupt those who wield it. And that's not the only problem. Pushing bad ideas underground reduces the opportunity we all have to discuss or debate them, and it removes the possibility of persuasion. And with no peaceful outlet available for people on the wrong side of the law, their bad ideas may well become more and more malignant, and they may eventually turn to actual violence and terrorism because that's the only course of action they think they have left. But it doesn't have to be this way. It's up to us to lead by example and show that we're capable of fostering civil conversations in good faith that acknowledge and address the problems and concerns of our ideological opponents, even when we strongly disagree with their conclusions. It's a good thing to treat people you don't like as human beings to be persuaded instead of enemies to be attacked or imprisoned. In fact, it's the only way to heal our fractured society. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. This was a difficult one to write, and it's never a great feeling to be defending the rights of hateful bigoted zealots, but if you're a defender of free speech, sometimes that's just what you have to do. Still, let's all do our best to lead by example and be thoughtful and measured in the comments. And please, check out our behind-the-scenes podcast. The audio is available wherever you get your podcast, but if you prefer a video version, we've set up a new YouTube channel just for that. It comes out every Friday, but supporters on Patreon and Subscribe Star get early access and special bonus content. So if that interests you, please consider becoming one of our supporters. We've also opened up our Discord to the public, and we'd love to see you there too. Lastly, I wanted to let you know that we're planning on hosting a huge conference in June called FECON. It's going to feature tons of amazing speakers and sessions on entrepreneurship, creativity, personal development, economic and political theory, and more. Find the links for that and everything else I mentioned in the description below. And as always, be sure to like this video, subscribe to the channel, hit that bell icon, and look for our out-of-frame accounts on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram. See you next time.


Hey, you want to get it on? One thing that I do like about Devin is she doesn't really look that much different without makeup on. Does she look better with makeup on? Absolutely. But she's not hideous without it. Devin has new cottage cheese. Like Devin is still very, very tight and supple. The problem I have with Conovan is that he lied about all of this for years, right? Pretending he had some smoke show, hard nine who was not a single mom, right? They don't want you knowing the truth because the minute you do, you will stop giving the money. Devin is a seven. Her body, on the other hand, is an eight and a half. Maybe even a little higher depending upon what she is wearing.  People don't know that you're very good with women like and you were a player back in the day. Like everyone thinks, oh, he has a great LTR. Devin slept with a lot of guys, gentlemen.