Team

NEAMS Leadership Team

David Henderson

DOE NE-5 Federal Program Manager

Tanju Sofu

NEAMS Deputy Director

David Andersson

National Technical Director

2025 Annual Review: Fast Reactors

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NEAMS Extended Leadership Team

Michael Cooper

Deputy Lead, Fuel Performance

Rui Hu

Deputy Lead, Thermal Fluids

Matthew Jessee

Lead, Reactor Physics

Elia Merzari

Lead, Thermal-Hydraulics

Stephen Novascone

Lead, Fuel Performance

Javier Ortensi

Deputy Lead, Reactor Physics

Cody Permann

Deputy Lead, Multiphysics Applications

Emily Shemon

Lead, Multiphysics Applications

Benjamin Spencer

Lead, Structural Materials & Chemistry

Ted Besmann

Deputy Lead, Structural Materials & Chemistry
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David Henderson

DOE NE-5 Federal Program Manager

David Henderson is the Federal Program Manager at the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) for the Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) Program. He has been with DOE since 2001 and previously held positions as Director of NE’s Office of Fuel Cycle Research & Development and Assistant Manager for Program Support at the Idaho Operations Office (DOE-ID). Mr. Henderson received his B.S. and M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University.

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David Andersson

National Technical Director

Dr. David Andersson is the National Technical Director of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program. He joined Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in 2007 as a Glenn T. Seabdev.inl.gov postdoctoral fellow and was converted to the position of Technical Staff Member in 2009. His Ph.D. is in Materials Science and Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. Under the same program, he is also a technical contributor to research on molten salt reactors and, in particular, properties of fuel salts. He was previously the Deputy Lead of the Fuel Performance Technical Area in NEAMS and held similar positions in the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL) program. Dr. Andersson’s primary technical expertise is in electronic structure (DFT) and empirical potential calculations/simulations of thermodynamic and kinetic properties of defects in nuclear fuels and their application in multi-scale fuel performance models. He has published 80+ peer reviewed papers and numerous reports on these and related topics.

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Tanju Sofu

NEAMS Deputy Director

Dr. Tanju Sofu is a Deputy National Technical Director for the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is a program manager at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). He also coordinates the methods, modeling and validation activities, and international collaborations under the Fast Reactor Campaign of DOE’s Advanced Reactor Technologies (ART) program, and manages advanced reactor licensing activities at ANL’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Division for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Dr. Sofu joined Argonne in 1992 as a postdoctoral appointee after receiving his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from University of Tennessee in Knoxville. During his tenure at ANL, he contributed to numerous projects involving large-scale computational physics and fluid dynamics simulations on high-performance computing platforms for design optimizations, model validations, and safety analyses.

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Matthew Jessee

Lead, Reactor Physics

Dr. Matthew A. Jessee is the Reactor Physics Lead of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is a Senior Research and Development staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). His research interests include methods and software development in lattice physics analysis, multigroup cross section processing, sensitivity analysis, uncertainty quantification, parameter estimation, and reduced order modeling for challenging reactor physics and radiation transport applications. Dr. Jessee is the lead code developer for the Polaris lattice physics code in the SCALE Code System and the lead for the ARPA-E MEITNER program Resource team. Dr. Jessee received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering at the North Carolina State University in 2008, his Masters of Nuclear Engineering (MNE) at North Carolina State University in 2005, and his B.S. in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Tennessee in 2003.

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LANL Headshot: Michael Cooper

Michael Cooper

Deputy Lead, Fuel Performance

Dr. Michael Cooper is as a Scientist in the Materials Science and Technology Division at LANL, where he has worked since 2015. Before that he obtained a PhD in Materials Science from Imperial College London. He has 13 years of experience in the atomic scale simulation of nuclear materials and the application of atomistic results in the engineering scale fuel performance code BISON, and phase field code MARMOT. Throughout this time at LANL he has worked primarily on the Fuels Technical area of the DOE-NE NEAMS program, where he was the atomic scale technical expert lead. He has led work to support the development of accident tolerant fuels (doped UO2 and silicides), as well as burnup extension of traditional UO2, with a focus on developing mechanistic models that support fundamental understanding of fuel performance and acceleration of fuel qualification. Additionally, he has led the LANL modeling component of an FOA on accident tolerant fuel and been part of several LDRD projects that span various nuclear materials. He has over 70 peer-reviewed articles.

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Rui Hu

Deputy Lead, Thermal Fluids

Dr. Rui Hu is the Deputy Lead of the Thermal Fluids Technical Area of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is a Group Manager for Plant System Analysis in Nuclear Science and Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). He currently leads the development of an advanced system analysis code, SAM, for the NEAMS program; and a number of other projects on SAM development, application, and validation. Dr. Hu received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His areas of technical expertise include reactor thermalhydraulics, safety analysis, and multi-scale multiphysics modeling and simulation methods, and he has published over 70 papers on these topics.

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Stephen Novascone

Lead, Fuel Performance

Dr. Stephen Novascone is the Fuel Performance Technical Area Lead of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is a staff scientist at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Dr. Novascone received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering at Utah State University and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Idaho. His research focuses on development and application of nuclear fuel performance simulation software and he has published many papers on this and a diverse set of scientific and engineering topics.

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Elia Merzari

Lead, Thermal-Hydraulics

Dr. Elia Merzari is the Thermal-Hydraulics Technical Area Lead of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is an Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University with a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). He served in the past in the Leadership Council of NEAMS. Merzari received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo, Japan). His research focuses on large scale simulations of turbulence applied to nuclear engineering systems and he has published over one hundred papers on this and related topics. Dr. Merzari is an editor for the Nuclear Engineering and Design journal. He has served in several roles for the thermalhydraulics division of the American Nuclear Society for which he is the current Vice-chair/Chairelect. He is also a past chair of the Computational Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee, Fluids Engineering Division, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). He has received several awards for his work including an R&D100 award, the Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award (ANS) and the Gedev.inl.gove Westinghouse Silver Medal (ASME).

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Benjamin Spencer

Lead, Structural Materials & Chemistry

Dr. Benjamin Spencer is the Structural Materials and Chemistry Technical Area Lead of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is a computational scientist at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). His research has focused on various aspects of computational solid mechanics and its applications to nuclear energy. He leads development of the Grizzly code for nuclear power plant structural materials aging simulation, and is also a significant contributor to the BISON and MOOSE codes at INL. He received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Brigham Young University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado.

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Cody Permann

Deputy Lead, Multiphysics Applications

Dr. Cody Permann is the Deputy Lead of the Multiphysics Applications Technical Area of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is the Department Manager for the Computational Frameworks Team at the Idaho National Laboratory. In his current role he oversees the development and maintenance of the Multiphysics Object Oriented Simulation Environment (MOOSE). Dr. Permann has extensive experience with modeling and simulation architecture and code coupling. He obtained his B.S. in Computer Science from Idaho State University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Idaho. The MOOSE framework is widely used by researchers across the US and internationally. Dr. Permann has over a dozen copyrights, has received an R&D100 award and two laboratory director awards.

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Javier Ortensi

Deputy Lead, Reactor Physics

Dr. Javier Ortensi is the Deputy Lead of the Reactor Physics Technical Area of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is a staff scientist at Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Dr. Ortensi received his B.S. and M.S from Texas A&M University and his Ph.D. in Applied Science and Engineering from Idaho State University. His research focuses on the multiphysics simulation of advanced nuclear reactors. He has been involved in the multiphysics modeling and simulation of a number of reactor designs, including pressurized water, micro, prismatic and pebble-bed high temperature, and fast systems, experimental facilities and nuclear propulsion systems. He developed and led the OECD/NEA international benchmark on the MHTGR-350 design. Dr. Ortensi has five years of industrial experience with Entergy Operations Inc., has published a number of journal publications, and holds three copyrights.

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Emily Shemon

Lead, Multiphysics Applications

Dr. Emily Shemon is the Lead of the Multiphysics Applications Technical Area of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program and is a staff engineer at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). She holds appointments in Argonne’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Division and Leadership Computing Facility where she has led projects in reactor physics and multiphysics code development and application, and served as the liaison for nuclear energy-related supercomputing projects. Shemon received her B.S.E., M.S.E. and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the advancement of high-performance reactor physics and multiphysics simulation capabilities for nuclear reactor applications.

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Ted Besmann

Deputy Lead, Structural Materials & Chemistry

Dr. Ted Besmann is the Deputy Lead of the Structural Materials and Chemistry Technical Area of the U.S. DOE, Office of Nuclear Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program. He joined the University of South Carolina in 2014 as Professor and General Atomics SmartState Chair for Transformational Nuclear Technologies after working at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he was a Group Leader.  Besmann has focused on studying the high temperature chemistry of energy materials, including incorporating thermochemical modeling into nuclear fuel performance codes. Recent efforts have been aimed at thermodynamic modeling and database development for molten salt reactor (MSR) salt systems, leading the DOE project, and generation of novel nuclear waste forms as Deputy Director of the DOE Center for Hierarchical Waste Form Materials.  Besmann is a Fellow of both the American Ceramic Society and the American Nuclear Society.

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