Dr. Mehdi Asgari is the Industry Technology Innovation and Deployment Coordinator for the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In this role, he supports staff in developing industry partnerships that are essential to the successful execution of the division’s technology development and maturation programs. He leads initiatives to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders while actively promoting ORNL’s technologies and expertise. Since joining ORNL in 2017, Dr. Asgari has led multiple U.S. Department of Energy-funded projects in collaboration with Constellation and Global Nuclear Fuel (GNF) and contributed to the development and benchmarking of advanced modeling and simulation tools, including the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications.
Dr. Asgari brings more than 30 years of experience spanning organizational and project management, business development, light water reactor (LWR) computational reactor physics, core and bundle design, optimization methods for reload design, and nuclear fuel cycle analysis. Before joining ORNL, he spent over nine years at Studsvik ScandPower as a Principal Consultant specializing in reactor core modeling and simulation. At Idaho National Laboratory, he served as Department Manager for Reactor Physics Analysis & Design, leading more than 40 scientists and engineers across multiple technical disciplines. He also directed a research group focused on transmutation and fuel cycle analysis for LWRs and sodium fast reactors under the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. Earlier in his career at GNF, he served as a Technical Program Manager overseeing fuel cycle and reload design as well as licensing analyses for several boiling water reactor plants. Dr. Asgari holds multiple patents related to services and product designs applied to LWR technologies.
Dr. Asgari received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, a master’s degree in nuclear engineering, and doctorate in engineering science with emphasis in Nuclear Engineering from Louisiana State University.
