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Benoit Forget, the Korea Electric Power Professor of Nuclear Engineering, has been named the new head of the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), effective April 1.

Bens substantial research contributions and dedication to his students are truly remarkable, says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. In particular, his leadership with regards to computational science and engineering activities have had a lasting impact on the NSE department, as well as the Institute as a whole. I look forward to welcoming Ben to the School of Engineerings leadership team.

Since 2019, Forget has served as associate head of NSE. His primary focus in that role has been on expanding computational science and engineering activities in the department and leading its engagement with the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. Forget has also served as co-chair of the Working Group on College Infrastructure for the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, which provided an in-depth overview of MITs computing infrastructure needs.

A recognized leader in analytical and computational modeling, Forget is the founder of the MIT Computational Reactor Physics Group (CRPG), which he leads with professor of the practice emeritus Kord Smith. Forget and his team at CRPG have developed novel methods to simulate the complex physics at play within a nuclear reactor. Leveraging the use of modern computing architectures, these simulations could lead to optimized designs for safer, more efficient nuclear reactors.

Forget received his bachelors degree in chemical engineering and masters degree in energy engineering from cole Polytechnique de Montral. After earning a PhD in nuclear engineering from Georgia Tech, he worked at Idaho National Laboratory as a nuclear engineer. He joined MITs faculty in 2008.

Forget succeeds Anne White, who has led NSE since 2019. White was named associate provost and associate vice president for research administration in November 2022.

I am grateful to Anne for her tremendous leadership as head of NSE, adds Chandrakasan. Her focus on developing solutions for the betterment of humankind, as well has her commitment to fostering a strong sense of community, has had an indelible impact on the department.

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Benoit Forget named head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering - MIT News

Earlier this month, the University announced that the Board of Trustees had approved the hiring of seven new faculty members including the return of the prominent African American Studies scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.The University has announced new faculty appointments six times over the past year. The Daily Princetonian looked back at faculty appointments over the past years to examine trends across academic disciplines.

In the past two years, the University hired 52 new professors, with the highest number of professors being hired within the the computer science and history departments. Despite differences between departments, the data does not show a long-term shift to a single area of study.

Four new professors is in line with the growth of the Department of Computer Science in recent years in terms of undergraduate enrollment. The Department of Computer Science awarded just 36 undergraduate degrees in 2011, but 212 members of the Class of 2024 declared Computer Science. There has been growth just over the past few years. Computer science (B.S.E.) has become the most popular major, going from 9.9 percent of the Class of 2020 declaring the major to 11.9 percent for the Class of 2024. Computer science (A.B.) experienced a similar increase, going from 2.6 percent for the Class of 2020 to 4.4 percent of the Class of 2024.

Two out of the four professors hired in computer science are in research areas related to technological implications on humans. Parastoo Abtahis research focus is human-computer interaction, and Aleksandra Korolova, formerly of the University of Southern California, focuses on the societal impacts of algorithms and AI. The other two hired professors are Alex Lombardi, who studies the theoretical foundations of cryptography, and Ellen Zhong, whose research areas are computational biology and machine learning.

The Department of History, the other department that hired four professors over the past two years, has actually experienced a decrease in popularity as one of the most declared majors over the past five years. For the Class of 2020, 5.8 percent of the class declared history, while for the Class of 2024, 4.2 percent of the class declared it as their major.

The four professors hired in the history department focus on a range of different topics. Matthew Jones, formerly of Columbia University, studies the history of science and technology. Yonatan Glazer-Eytan focuses on early modern Spain, exploring the interfaith and interethnic relations on the Iberian peninsula. Elizabeth Ellis specializes in early American and Native American history. Corinna Zeltsman studies modern Latin America, particularly in 19th- and 20th-century Mexico.

The School of Public and International Affairs also had more departmental hires. SPIA hired three new professors in the past three years, possibly accommodating an increase in size over the past five years.

Over the past year, President Christopher Eisgruber 83 has expressed his commitment to expanding STEM on campus, saying that the University cannot be a great liberal arts university in the 21st century without having a great school of engineering.

In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Eisgruber stated that if he had to pick one top priority for the next five years, it would be rebuilding and fortifying our School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Despite Eisgrubers commitment, the University has not shown a pronounced increase in professors hired for the engineering school over the past five years. They have hired 13 professors across the five engineering departments comparable to hiring rates for the humanities departments. Small disparities could be attributed, in part, to differences in rates at which professors are leaving various departments.

Additionally, a number of the hired professors are coming from other institutions. Seven of them are from public universities, six from international universities, and 14 from private universities.

Isabel Yip is a head News editor for the Prince.

Annie Rupertus, Julian Hartman-Sigall, and Marc Lessler contributed reporting.

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

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Computer science and history lead faculty hiring, no long-term trend to engineering - The Daily Princetonian

When Nate Anderson from Minneapolis, Minn. was making his college decision, he was looking for two things: a smaller private Christian university and a great engineering program.

There are a lot of small Christian schools in the United States and a lot of schools with really great engineering programs, said Anderson. But if you look at the Venn diagram of the two different categories, theres almost nothing in the middle.

Anna Giboney, from La Crescenta, California, added a third criterion. Coming from a diverse pocket in California, she wanted the opportunity to engage with a multicultural community.

Fortunately for both Anderson and Giboney, there would be no need to scale back their expectations.

Calvin was one of those very few schools that fit in that small slice of the Venn diagram, said Anderson.

Thats something that pulled me in, not only the Christian and the engineering aspects, but that third branch of how many international students are on campus and that Calvin actually has engineering trips abroad, said Giboney. To be able to fit an international experience into a four-year degree is really uncommon.

Anderson and Giboney are now in the final few weeks of their Calvin experience and together working as part of a four-person team on their senior design project.

The team is designing a user-friendly device that will help people living in India and China, two countries most affected by long-term exposure to air pollution, to detect if they are in harms way.

While there are ways to detect the presence of certain harmful pollutants already, they are industrial-grade devices and cost hundreds of dollars. So, the gap we are filling is in that common user, said Giboney, not someone who wants to spend $600 on a device, someone who wants to spend a lot less to see if their kids need to get out of the current environment they are in for their safety.

Anderson and Giboney, along with fellow engineering majors Jordan Alexander and Ben DeWeerd are one of the 20 groups who will showcase their worktheir prototypes or proof of conceptson Saturday, April 15, 2023, at the Senior Design Open House.

Braden Kopenkoskey, Jacob Van Wyngarden, Jonathan Washburn, and Ryan Storteboom, are another team of engineers ready to showcase their project, a machine they designed to automate the process of making pigs in a blanket.

Ryans family works with South Olive Christian School and they run a year-round fundraiser with the proceeds going toward helping kids from very low-income families be able to attend the school, said Van Wyngarden.

The fundraiser is a resounding success year-after-year, they make and sell pigs in a blanket, but the number of man hours and labor-intensive process was causing volunteer burnout. So, the team of engineering majors at Calvin got to work and created a solution that automates the process and multiplies the product and the impact.

The school estimates that if they could double their production, they could double their sales, said Kopenkoskey. So, we are going to see a dramatic increase in what they can produce and fundraise for and its going to significantly drop tuition rates for those who need it most.

All of the senior engineering teams are working on solving problems with their projects and are committed to, actually intentionally trained to, not only create solutions but ones that are customized to fit the culture and context.

All the engineering classes we take focus on problem solving, said Trevor Boer, a civil and environmental engineering major. So just the general curriculum in the engineering program prepares all students well for tackling a design problem. What are the specs you need to meet, the requirements, the project needs? And also, the emphasis in Christian engineering, how do you consider the cultural appropriateness of the design?

Boer is working with fellow civil and environmental engineering majors Jose Munoz, David Bulten, and Matt Van Zeelt in coming up with a gravity-fed water distribution system for a community in Honduras.

Weve done something similar in one of our hydraulic classes, now we are doing it more in real life, said Bulten.

The overall process and the software that we are using to create that design is the same, said Van Zeelt, but we are able to build on what we learned in that course and are making it more complex for this larger scope.

The visuals, the proof of concepts the students will present in mid-April are indeed impressive, even on-par with industry output.

The fascinating thing is with a lot of engineering companies, thats where they stop [with a proof of concept], said Giboney. So, big companies will hire an engineering company and ask them to give them a proof of concept as the deliverable, so having the seniors end at proof of concept isnt as if we are missing the next step in manufacturing, its actually what a lot of companies do in engineering.

But the outcome for each of these soon-to-be graduates goes well beyond the design solutions they helped create.

The reason I wanted a private Christian liberal arts education is the ability to diversify my learning and thats what Ive loved about Calvins engineering program, said Giboney. It was concentrations, it wasnt majoring in mechanical engineering and never getting access to any of these other branches.

We get a broader education, so its nice because we are dangerous in different disciplines, said Boer. Like we took an electrical course, so if I ever talk with the process group at my firm, who do a lot of electronics, I at least know what they are talking about, Im not going in blind.

Our classes here really teach us how to learn so that we can be successful when we go out into the workforce and world, said Alexander. Whether thats learning new things in engineering or learning how to be leaders or good speakers or good communicators, I think Calvin has equipped me to learn.

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Engineers Take Calvin Education Beyond Proof Of Concept - News - Calvin University