Bio
Sergey Smolentsev obtained his Ph.D. in Thermophysics from Leningrad Polytechnic University (Russia) in 1990 and performed his postdoctoral study on instabilities in liquid metal flows at Ben Gurion University of Negev (Israel) under Prof. Hermann Branover. From 1990 he worked as Assistant/Associate Professor at the St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, and in 1998 joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) as a researcher. Sergey served as task leader/coordinator/developer in various national and international projects on fusion technology, such as the Advanced Power Extraction Study (APEX, 1998-2003), ITER Test Blanket Module (2003-2012), US-JAPAN JUPITER/TITAN Collaboration on Liquid Breeders (2001-2012), US-INDIA Collaboration on LM MHD/Heat Transfer for PbLi blankets (2015-2017) and Fusion Engineering System Studies/Fusion Nuclear Science Facility in the US (2015-present). As project leader in a collaboration with EUROfusion on blanket development (2015-2019), Sergey was responsible for the design and construction of the one-of-a-kind Magnetohydrodynamic PbLi Experiment (MaPLE) facility at UCLA. At present, he is a Distinguished R&D Staff Member at ORNL, working on breeding blankets, fuel cycle, liquid metal plasma facing components, and code development for fusion cooling/breeding applications. His research accomplishments have been published in more than 150 scientific articles and one monograph, with an H-index of 38. He is editor of the FLUIDS journal and Executive Committee Member of ANS/Fusion Energy Division. Sergey is married and has 3 children. In his spare time he likes gardening, fishing, mushroom foraying and hiking.