After a cancellation in 2020 and a virtual event in 2021, Missouri S&T students were happy to attend the American Nuclear Society’s student conference in person this spring.

Twenty-five undergraduates and seven graduate students from Missouri S&T attended the conference, which took place April 14-16 on the campus of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

“The experience was great,” says Eli Boland, NucE’21, a Ph.D. student in nuclear engineering. “It was fun to see everyone I knew and meet many new people.”

Boland earned Best Graduate Presentation in reactor physics with his research on using the Monte Carlo N-particle transport code to create a model of the delayed particle tail of the Annular Core Research Reactor, for which he used real detector data from the Missouri S&T Reactor.

Missouri S&T students won top honors in one of two undergraduate tracks and three of five graduate tracks. Other students who won awards include:

• Jack Fletcher, NucE’22, then a senior in nuclear engineering, Best Undergraduate Presentation for fusion energy and plasma
• Cole Kostelac, NucE’21, a master’s student in nuclear engineering, Best Graduate Presentation for nuclear criticality safety
• Jordan Fox, NucE’18, a Ph.D. student in nuclear engineering, Best Graduate Poster.