Brianna has won a Best Poster prize at the 2022 International Society for Electrochemistry Meeting in Germany

RAMPS group members Brianna Rector and Kwang O’Donnell attended the 31st Topical Meeting of the International Society of Electrochemistry, held in Aachen Germany from May 15-19, 2022. The meeting topic was Theory and Computation in Electrochemistry: Seeking Synergies in Methods, Materials and Systems. Kwang presented a poster, and Brianna gave a talk and also presented a poster, which won one of the eight “Best Poster” awards

The poster title was “Re-examining the Current Potential Relationship in Corrosion Systems”.

Brianna is awarded a NACE Foundation Dennis B. Dutton Award

Brianna Rector has been awarded a NACE Foundation of Canada Dennis B. Dutton Award for Student Leadership. This scholarship was created in 2018 to recognize exceptional leadership in promoting and/or positively influencing the education of current or future students within Canada in the fields of corrosion science and engineering. The Association for Materials Protection and Performance (AMPP) awards up to two scholarships every year in the amount of $4,000 CDN each on behalf of the NACE Foundation of Canada.

Brianna and Thao awarded CAMBR Trainee Travel Awards

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A still from Brianna’s video (click to see larger).

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A still from Thao’s video (click to see larger).

Brianna Rector and Thao Do, PhD candidates from our group, have been awarded Centre for Advanced Materials and Biomaterials Research Trainee Travel Awards, and will each receive an award of $1500 to attend an international conference!

You can watch their videos here.

More information about CAMBR, from their website:

“The Centre for Advanced Materials and Biomaterials Research (CAMBR) brings together more than 50 research groups to tackle key materials challenges. From determining how to provide energy to a growing global population in an environmentally sustainable manner to ways to enhance health and quality of life using materials-based approaches to medicine, CAMBR research teams engage in cutting-edge and multidisciplinary research with colleagues across the institution and in collaboration with external partners to move the bar forward in the development of new devices and products with novel materials.”

https://www.uwo.ca/cambr/

Congratulations to Dr. Naghizadeh!

Masi has successfully defended her PhD on Copper Corrosion Dynamics under Deep Geologic Repository Conditions. Congratulations, and we know you will go on to great things.

Brianna is awarded an NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canadian Doctoral Scholarship.

Congratulations to Brianna Rector who has been awarded an Alexander Graham Bell Canadian Graduate Scholarship-Doctoral (NSERC-CGS-D).

Brianna’s research project focuses on the development of a corrosion model for carbon steel in used fuel containers, a key engineered barrier in Canada’s permanent disposal plan for used nuclear fuel. She aims to describe the controlling processes in the early stages of corrosion as a function of environmental conditions such as pH, temperature, oxygen content, and ionic strength. As part of this project, Brianna combines electrochemical tests and computer simulation to model the early stages of corrosion.

Thao is awarded a Roy G. Post Foundation Scholarship

Congratulations to our PhD candidate Thao Do who is the recipient of a 2021 Roy G. Post Foundation Scholarship. The Roy G. Post Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides scholarships to students to develop careers in the safe management of nuclear materials and to participate in the WM Conference.

Thao’s research project involves the removal of oxides from reactor metals and alloys using laser ablation. The removal of these radioactive surface materials from metallic wastes will allow the volumes of metallic wastes kept in interim and long-term storage to be minimized. As part of this project he also carries out studies to better understand the corrosion process of alloys under reactor conditions, and produce inactive surface oxides with various film thickness, morphologies and compositions, for testing of the laser ablation system under development.

Jennifer has won the R.E. Jervis Award!

The R.E. Jervis Award is provided by the Canadian Nuclear Society (CNS) and recognizes excellence in research and development carried out by a full time graduate student in nuclear engineering or related fields. It is awarded once a year. Congratulations to our PhD candidate Youn Gyeong (Jennifer) Shin for winning this prestigious prize.

Jennifer’s thesis work involves studying the corrosion behaviour of carbon steel under gamma radiation, in relation to the design of the Canadian container for spent nuclear fuel disposal.

More information about the R.E. Jervis Award can be found here:

https://www.cns-snc.ca/cns/jervis_award/

Tour of the NWMO Proof Test Facility

The Wren Group visited the Nuclear Waste Management Organization's Proof Test Facility in February, 2020. This was a fantastic opportunity for information exchange between NWMO and its academic research partners from several universities. We got to see the used fuel container design, bentonite clay box production, and fabrication and transportation technologies. Dr. Wren gave a presentation about our group's collaborative research on radiation-influenced corrosion with NWMO. Our students gave poster presentations on their research projects and had many fruitful discussions with NWMO engineers and scientists, and other visiting researchers. Thanks, NWMO, for hosting such a useful and well-organized event!

Mi is awarded a Roy G. Post Foundation Scholarship

Congratulations to our PhD candidate Mi Li who is the recipient of a 2020 Roy G. Post Foundation Scholarship. The Roy G. Post Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides scholarships to students to develop careers in the safe management of nuclear materials and to participate in the WM Conference.

Mi’s project is supported by Ontario Power Generation. The main objective of her PhD project is to address a corrosion issue in one of the Pickering nuclear reactors. The project focuses on the gamma-radiation-induced galvanic corrosion of dissimilar carbon steel and stainless steel welds which are commonly used as the supporting structure materials for nuclear reactors.

Thao wins Best Oral Paper/Presentation award at WM2019 Conference

Wren Group researchers attended the WM2019 Conference in Phoenix in March, 2019. This large conference addresses all aspects of radioactive waste management, and was attended by over 1000 people from 30 different countries. Thao’s presentation “Methodology for Volume Reduction of Radioactive Metallic Waste”was selected as the best out of 450 papers/presentations, so we are very proud of him! Congratulations, Thao.