2005 Delegation

Chair

Rian Bahran

Rian is a graduate student at RPI pursuing a Ph.D. in Nuclear Science and Engineering. As undergraduate at RPI, he earned a dual B.S. in Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics. Outside of his coursework, Rian has been involved in research projects relating to the upgrade of the Gaerttner Linear Accelerator Laboratory (LINAC) Injection Line. He previously served as the President of the ANS student section at RPI and was the general chair of the 2006 ANS Student Conference.

Vice Chair

Paul Kollath-Romano

Paul completed his undergraduate eduaction at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, earning Bachelor’s degrees in Nuclear Engineering and Applied Mathematics. While at Rensselaer, he served as Vice President, Treasurer, and Webmaster of the American Nuclear Society student chapter. He was also the Financial Chair for the 2006 ANS Student Conference hosted at Rensselaer. In his senior year, Paul was elected to the Student Senate.

Paul has interned at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation and the Office of Nuclear Security and Incident Response as well as Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory. Paul is currently performing graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology specializing in reactor physics and design.

Delegates

Katherine Gray

Kati completed her B.S. in Nuclear Engineering at Oregon State University in 2005 and is expecting her M.S. Nuclear Engineering from the University of Missouri-Columbia in May 2007. Her research is on creep properties of the nickel based Haynes 230 alloy. She is active in her ANS student section, serving as Vice President in 2005-2006, and was past President, Vice President, and Treasurer at Oregon State. She has interned with Exelon during two summers, most recently in the Governmental and Environmental Affairs Office.

Jason Hollern

Jason received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2004 and an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering in 2006 from The Ohio State University. He is currently employed at the Idaho National Laboratory as an Explosives Engineer and is in charge of the National and Homeland Security Explosives Test Range. Jason is also the past-president of the ANS student section at Ohio State.

Wayne Lytle

Wayne is entering his senior year at UIUC, pursuing a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering. He is active in undergraduate research on semiconductor applications.

Adam Nelson

Adam will be completing a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in December 2005. Following graduation, he will be entering the United States Navy for five years of service. Adam has interned with Los Alamos National Laboratory for the past two summers.

Whitney Raas

Whitney received her B.S. in Physics from UCLA in 2001. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering and a M.S. in Political Science from MIT. Her research is on the development of an explosives detection system for airport baggage and cargo containers using fast neutron resonance radiography. Whitney has done research at NASA as well. She served as Co-President of the ANS student section at MIT during the 2004-2005 school year.

Jill Rydalch

Jill is NESD’s first delegate from ISU and recently completed a Bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering. She is active in her ANS section, previously serving as Secretary, and was also the President of the Society of Women Engineers at ISU. Jill interned at Argonne National Laboratory – West, now part of Idaho National Laboratory, during the summer of 2004 and at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the summer of 2005.

Leah Spradley

Leah completed her B.S. in Systems and Information Engineering from the University of Virginia in 2003. She is now pursuing a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering and Management from Vanderbilt. Leah’s thesis project is to build a modeling tool that can be applied for analyzing how the waste management system performance of the Yucca Mountain Project is enabled or impeded by various design and operational assumptions during the pre-closure phase.

Krystina Tack

Krysie is pursuing a M.S. in Radiation Health Physics with a minor in Microbiology at Oregon State University. She worked at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center over the summer of 2005 and will be starting on her Ph.D. there in the fall of 2006.