Peter Dimpfl successfully defended his thesis entitled “Monte Carlo Simulation of Thallium-Bromide Semiconductor Detector for Range Verification of a Carbon Ion Radiotherapy Beam Through Prompt Gamma-Ray Detection” on June 17, 2022. In this study, Monte Carlo simulations were completed to evaluate TlBr performance in the detection of prompt gamma rays generated from the irradiation of a Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) phantom with carbon ions. TlBr was able to detect the prompt Gamma-Ray profiles of three different materials (cortical bone, adipose tissue, PMMA) with correlation to actual simulated Bragg peaks. The committee includes Dr. Yu Kuang (chair), Dr. Zaijing Sun, Dr. Steen Madsen, and Dr. Hui Zhao.

Zaijing Sun (Health Physics and Diagnostic Sciences of UNLV) and his collaborators,  Biswajit Biswal (Mathematics and Computer Sciences of SCSU), and Andrew Duncan (Material Sciences and Technology of SRNL) published an article “ADA: Advanced Data Analytics Methods for Abnormal Frequent Episodes in the Baseline Data of ISD” in the Journal of Nuclear Engineering and Technology. In this study, Advanced Data Analytics (ADA) methods are applied to the big data generated by the In-situ Decommissioning (ISD) Sensor Network Test Bed at the Savannah River Site. Advanced analytics engine, a framework of data analytics, feature engineering, and machine learning, is introduced to discover abnormal frequent episodes in the big datasets, which lead to the early indicators of ISD system failures.

Zaijing Sun (Health Physics and Diagnostic Sciences) recently gave a talk, “Nuclear Activation Analysis” at the Clark County School District (CCSD) seminar series “Science Speaks in Nevada.” The seminar series is organized by the Nevada State Science Teachers Association, which provides one-hour session seminars with local STEM experts designed to increase educator content knowledge about local science phenomena.