ORNL visit sparks student interest in the nuclear workforce

Members of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) chapter of the Georgia Institute of Technology toured the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in February. A single lab visit can help cultivate the next generation of nuclear scientists and engineers.

The visit of about 15 undergraduate and graduate students was motivated by a 2024 tour that impressed Saanvi Bethi, a Georgia Tech freshman at the time. Bethi, who is president of the Georgia Tech chapter of ANS, is now majoring in nuclear and radiological engineering.

“I remember seeing the Spallation Neutron Source and the High Flux Isotope Reactor [DOE Office of Science user facilities at ORNL] and being amazed by how many of the things I’ve learned about in my nuclear classes were discovered at Oak Ridge,” she said. “Seeing the actual applications of nuclear science really brings a new level of motivation to our coursework. I also remember thinking the lab was so green and beautiful and about how much I’d really love to work there one day.”

Bethi applied for an internship the next summer and was accepted. She worked with applied data scientists John Sparger and Kalie Knecht in the Advanced Detection and Applied Data Science Group.

“Saanvi was highly motivated to learn about radiation detection and machine learning,” said Sparger, who was Bethi’s primary mentor. “She was able to go from her first peek at Knoll (a classic radiation detection textbook) and ML 101 tutorials to setting up real radiation detection experiments and training convolutional neural networks in just a few weeks. I was very impressed.”

Knecht added, “Saanvi made meaningful contributions to our radiation data analysis research by developing neural network models and analyzing their embedding behavior using clustering techniques. I’m excited to see what she pursues next. I hope this experience gave her a strong foundation in radiation detection that supports her coursework and helps inform her career path.”

Bethi said she hoped to inspire her collegiate colleagues with this winter’s tour. “I wanted to pay that experience forward,” she said. “I’m hoping that our trip will have inspired other students the way it inspired me two years ago to apply to internships and consider working at ORNL.”

The trip indeed inspired Georgia Tech student John Steiner. “This was my second time visiting the lab, and yet the tour felt entirely new — our tour guides made it clear there’s a flavor for everyone at Oak Ridge. What stood out this time was the plutonium production for the Mars Perseverance rover. As an aerospace engineering major, opportunities like this show me the types of projects that are available here and deeply encourage me to apply for an internship.”

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. — Dawn Levy