Alireza Haghighat

Robert E. Hord Jr. Professor, Nuclear Engineering
Fellow, American Nuclear Society

Director, Nuclear Engineering Program
Director, Mechanical Engineering Program at the Greater Washington Metro Area Campus
Leader, Virginia Tech Transport Theory Group (VT³ G)
Leader , Multiphysics for Advance Reactor Simulation [MARS] Center
Vice-Chair of Board , Consortium [VNEC] Nonprofit Organization
Chair, ANS 19.10 Standards Committee

Author, Monte Carlo Methods for Particle Transport, 2nd edition, Aug. 2020.;
For corrections, see Errata

Recent awards
>>Dean's Award for Excellence in Service, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech, 2021

• Education

  PhD, Nuclear Engineering, University of Washington, 1986
  MS, Nuclear Engineering, University of Washington, 1981
  BS, Physics, Pahlavi (Shiraz) University, Shiraz, Iran, 1978

• Teaching

  NSEG 5124, Nuclear Reactor Analysis
  NSEG 5134, Monte Carlo Methods for Particle Transport
  NSEG 6124 , Particle Transport Methods and Application
  NSEG 6134, Advanced Reactor Physics

• Areas of Research

  Virginia Tech Transport Theory Group (VT³G) is engaged the following research activities:
  Development of advanced particle transport methods
  Over my academic career at three universities, my students and I have developed new methodologies and codes for solving particle transport problems faster and more accurately. Attached diagram depicts my journey from methods and hardware requiring years of computation time to methods that enable real-time computation on a single core!

  • Multi-stage, Response-function particle Transport (MRT) methodology and its application see a presentation on MRT & RAPID code system
  • Hybrid parallel numerical (Sn, Method of Characteristic, Ray-Tracing & Fictitious Quadrature) particle transport theory methods
  • Automated variance reduction techniques for fixed-source and eigenvalue Monte Carlo calculations, e.g., CADIS - Consistent Adjoint Driven Importance Sampling**

  Development of advanced particle transport codes
  (PENTRAN, TITAN, A3MCNP, INSPCT-s, AIMS, TITAN-IR, RAPID)

  Development of collaborative Virtual Reality Systems for Scientific Computing

  Application of Particle Transport Methods and Codes for design and analysis of nuclear systems (with application to power, security and nonproliferation, and medicine):

  - Advanced reactor core designs (molten salt and solid fuel)

  • Computational methods in reactor physics and shielding
  • Algorithms for image reconstruction in medical devices
  • Advanced algorithms for generation of multigroup nuclear cross sections
  • Sensitivity, perturbation methods and uncertainty quantification

• Honors and Awards

  >> Dean’s Award for Excellence in Service, College of Engineering, Virginia Tech, 2021
  >> Chairman of the Board of VNEC Nonprofit Organization, 2015 & 2018
  >> Outstanding former students (e.g., Director of Idaho National Lab, 4 professors at peer institutions)
  >> Recipient of the 2011 RPSD Professional Excellence Award, 2011, for his outstanding contributions to deterministic, Monte Carlo, and hybrid particle transport methods and codes.
  >> Received a recognition award from DOE for his leadership & contributions to design and analysis for the UFTR HEU to LEU fuel conversion, 2009.
  >> Florida Power & Light Endowed Term Professorship, for his research accomplishments and leadership,2009.
  >> Served as Chair (2007) and a member (2010) of an International Advisory Council for the Nuclear and Quantum Engineering (NQe) Department, KAIST, Korea.
  >> Fellow of American Nuclear Society (2002) (For pioneering contributions to the development of accurate and efficient deterministic and stochastic particle transport theory methods and their application to different complex nuclear systems; for major contribution to multigroup cross section generation, differencing schemes, domain decomposition formulations for parallel computing, iterative and acceleration techniques, and for work in automating the Monte Carlo variance reduction of fixed-source problems)
  >> Received (with students and collaborators) 10 best paper awards from different ANS technical divisions. Presented over 112 invited keynote, distinguished speaker, plenary talks, short courses, and workshops (51% of the events were held in foreign countries and/or sponsored by international organizations)
  >> Chaired ANS professional Divisions including: Mathematics and Computation, Computational Medical Physics Working Group, Reactor Physics
  >> Chaired ANS standard Committees
  >> Participated at several review panels, IAEA Expert training, and Hosted IAEA Fellows
  >> Chaired/organized numerous sessions at national and international meetings
  >> Who's Who in Science and Engineering, 1989-present
  >> Sigma Xi - The Scientific Research Society, Penn State University, 1988
  >> Alpha Nu Sigma - National Nuclear Engineering Honor Society, Washington Alpha Chapter, 1981

• Collaboration - Centers and Groups at VT

  Leader -Virginia Tech Transport Theory Group [VT³G]

  Member - ICTAS' Global Energy and Materials Initiative
  -- Leader Multiphysics for Advance Reactor Simulation [MARS] Center

  Member Center for Neutrino Physics
  -- Member The CHANDLER Detector Project

  Collaborator - Creation of a Collaborative Virtual Reality System

• Collaboration - National & International Universities and Labs

  - Georgia Institute of Technology
  - Idaho National Lab
  - Idaho State University
  - MIT
  - North Carolina State University
  - Oak Ridge National Lab
  - Ohio State University
  - Politecnico di Torino, Switzerland
  - Politecnico di Torino, Italy
  -Jozef Stefan Institute - Reactor Physics Division, Slovenia

• Collaboration - Industry

  - Framatome
  - Holtec International
  - Southern Nuclear
  - TerraPower
  - Westinghouse

• Patents Filing

  • Alireza Haghighat, “Test and Education Microreactor ,” Provisional Patent Application filed, U.S. Patent Application No: 63/181,392, April 29, 2021 (VTIP No.: 21-113)
  • Alireza Haghighat, Valerio Mascolino, and Nicholas Polys, “Collaborative Virtual Reality System for Scientific Computing,” Provisional Patent Application filed, U.S. Patent Application No: 62/657,047, April 23, 2018 (VTIP No.: 18-105).
  • Alireza Haghighat, William Walters, and Nathan Roskoff, “RAPID Particle Transport Methodology for Real-time Simulation of Nuclear Systems” Provisional Patent Application Filed, US Patent Application No. 62/582,709, Nov 7, 2017 (VTIP 18-047).
  • Alireza Haghighat and Katherine Royston, “Deterministic Particle Transport for Medical Image Reconstruction (DMIR),” Provisional Patent Application filed, US Patent Application No. 62/162,159, April 26, 2015 (VTIP 15097).

• CV & List of publications

  - 2-page CV (2021)
  -publications (2021)

• Gallery of graphs

  This is an animation of a 1-d shield for different scattering ratios from 0.0 to 1.0 with 0.1 intervals. 1-D shield with for different scattering ratios

  These are three animations of the JSI core model using the Serpent code system. xy projection of the core model
  xz projection of the core model
  yz projection of the core model

  Calculated FM coefficient for 10M particles and associated uncertainties for the JSI core; source is located at the bottom of the central rod FM Coefficients & Uncertainties, JSI core with 10M particles

  Animation of calculated JSI FM coefficients starting from the center rod to ring E FM Coefficient animation