2006 Delegation

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.

Vice Chair

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.

Jess Chandler

Jess graduated from Georgia Tech with her M.S. in Nuclear Engineering in Fall 2006; her thesis was on LWR fuel reprocessing methods. She interned with the Idaho National Laboratory in 2005 and the Georgia Public Policy Foundation in 2006. Jess is still at Georgia Tech pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy with a focus on Energy and Economics.

Delegates

Tony Elliot

Tony is currently pursuing a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering at Oregon State University. His thesis is Xenon Generation in a TRIGA Reactor, which will be used to calibrate Xenon phoswich detectors. Tony is also the current ANS Student Conference Chairman for the 2007 conference. Tony will be returning to Pacific Northwest National Lab during the summer of 2007 to work on detector research.

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.

Grant Kopec

Grant is currently pursuing an M.S. in nuclear engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His primary research involves the use of radiochemistry and computer modeling techniques to design fuel cells. He is also active in research involving nuclear proliferation and national security issues. Grant has previously worked for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on nuclear related issues.

David Hawn

David completed his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Ohio State University in 2005. He is now pursuing a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from OSU. David’s thesis project is to build a dynamic model of a liquid fluoride breeder reactor utilizing the thorium fuel cycle. The model will be verified using historical data from several molten salt reactor experiments conducted at Oak Ridge National Lab in the 50’s and 60’s. This model will be used with MCNP models to iterate changes to potential molten salt breeder reactor designs. He is also the President for the ANS student section at OSU.

Gary Sanford

Gary is a Senior at the University of Florida pursuing a degree in Nuclear & Radiological Engineering with Mathematics as a second major. He is an officer in his ANS chapter where he also represents the department to UF’s engineering council. Gary has interned at the Progress-Energy Crystal River Unit 3 Nuclear Plant for the past year and a half. Nuclear Engineering is his passion.

Tyler Schweitzer

Tyler is a first year graduate student at NC State pursuing a M.S. in Nuclear Engineering, after receiving a B.S. in Nuclear engineering from NC State. His research is in decision making under conditions of uncertainty on advanced nuclear fuel cycles. Outside of class Tyler is active in student government by serving as a Graduate Student Senator and member of the Nuclear Engineering Graduate Student Association. He is also a student member of the American Nuclear Society. Tyler has done summer internships at KAPL and General Electric and will spend the summer of 2007 at INL.

Erica Sherman

Erica is pursuing a dual degree in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering as well as her interests in energy. She has completed an internship with Westinghouse Electric and is interested in researching policy relating to Nuclear power, Biofuels, Energy Efficiency and Energy Regulation. She is active in her ANS section, currently serving as Vice President, and also chairs a Committee of students that serves in an advisory role to the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering at RPI.

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.