Graduate Students

RED² Laboratory Graduate Students

Ph.D. Students

Sherry Adadi

Sherry Adadi is a Ph.D. student in the NRE/MP Program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech. She will be conducting research under Dr. Dewji’s supervision, and in association with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Radiation Protection Group. Her work includes conducting FLUKA calculations, as well as investigating radiation protection aspects of LCLS-II-HE Cryomodule Test Facility at SLAC. This involves the characterization of the radiation source using advanced Monte Carlo methods, and the design of radiation safety systems in order to mitigate the hazards from radiation produced during operation of the test facility. Adadi graduated from Texas A&M University with a BS in Nuclear Engineering and a minor in Radiological Health Engineering in May 2022.

Adadi is a recipient of the:

  • 2023 Health Physics Society Accelerator Section H. Wade Patterson Memorial Award
  • 2023 Health Physics Society Travel Grant
  • 2022-2024 IAEA Marie-Curie Fellowship Programme

Ignacio Bartol

Ignacio Bartol is a Ph.D. student in the NRE/MP Program in the RED2 Laboratory at Georgia Tech. His work will be using computational fluid and particle dynamics (CFPD)  to model the dose deposited by inhaled radioactive aerosols, under the advising of Dr. Dewji. This is an exciting area to work in that mixes high-accuracy numerical modeling, with machine learning methods to improve the current state-of-the-art in internalized dose deposition. 

Ignacio has graduated as a Nuclear Engineer (i.e. Master of engineering degree equivalent) from the Balseiro Institute, a prestigious university in this field located in Bariloche, Argentina.  He has previously done two years of Physics at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), a requirement to be admitted to his undergraduate program. Their undergraduate thesis was titled “Optimization of F-18 administered dose for neurological PET/MR studies”, performed at the Institute of Nuclear technologies for health (INTECNUS).

Bartol is a recipient of the:

  • 2022-2023 Health Physics Society Robert Gardner Memorial Fellowship
  • 2022 Health Physics Society Travel Grant

Project: Evaluation of Exposure Pathway, Internalized Uptakes, and Dosimetry for Military Personnel from Radiological and Toxic Metal Sources; Enhancement of Biokinetics using Physiologically-Based Models for Internalized Radionuclides

Patrick Connolly

Patrick Connolly is a Ph.D. student in the NRE/MP Program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech.  He will be conducting research under Dr. Dewji’s supervision, and in association with SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory’s Materials in Extreme Conditions group. His research uses the Monte Carlo radiation transport code FLUKA to simulate the secondary radiation from MEC-U’s operation in order to determine the activation of material in the target chamber and other components in the room.  These activations can be responsible for high residual doses in the room which will need to be studied and potentially mitigated to ensure the safety of personnel.  Patrick graduated from Georgia Tech’s Nuclear Engineering program in the Spring of 2021.

Connolly is a recipient of the:

  • 2023 Health Physics Society Accelerator Section Lutz Moritz Memorial Award
  • 2023-2024 Health Physics Society J. Newell Stannard Fellowship

Project: Activation Studies in Petawatt Laser Facilities

David Gonzalez

David is a first-year MS/PhD student in the Medical Physics Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. David completed his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a minor of Economics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Fall of 2022. David conducts research in radiotherapy treatment planning through computational methods and machine learning with the Radiation Engineering, Detection, and Dosimetry Laboratory under Dr. Shaheen Dewji. This research area contributes to the state-of-the-art methods to improve external beam radiation therapy by leveraging statistical properties of medical imaging captures and numerical methods of quantifying internal movement of organs to produce more robust solutions for cancer treatment. This research also helps to rigidify the current dosimetric uncertainty considerations from respiratory patient movement while decreasing computational complexity and treatment planning subjectivity.

Gonzalez is a recipient of the:

  • 2023-2024 Health Physics Society Dade Moeller Scholarship
  • 2023 Health Physics Society Travel Grant

Project: Machine Learning in 4DCT Lung Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy (SBRT) Treatment Planning

Heechan Lee

Heechan Lee is a Ph.D. student in the NRE/MP Program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech. Heechan Lee received both a Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering (2018) and a Master of Science in Energy Systems Engineering (2020) from the Seoul National University. He has done several projects regarding the effects of low dose radiation to human health in Seoul National University. In the summer of 2017 he interned in KOMAC (Korean Multi-Purpose Accelerator Complex). He is working with Dr. Dewji and Oak Ridge National Laboratory for a Department of Energy-funded project harnessing machine learning to predict correlations between low dose radiation and epidemiological health.

Lee is a recipient of the:

  • 2022-2023 Health Physics Fellowship
  • 2022 Health Physics Society Travel Grant

Project: Low Dose Exposure Evaluation on Human Population Health  

Dmitri Margot

Dmitri Margot is a Ph.D. student in the NRE/MP Program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech. The focus of his research is on discriminating radionuclides biokinetics following an exposure or uptake from a radiological dispersal device (RDD), improvised nuclear device (IND), or nuclear accident involving realistic source term evaluation (particle size/uptake mode/chemical form) of radionuclides to more accurately enhance the biokinetic movement (i.e. metabolism) from uptakes of particulates or fallout. His work will be used to better inform radiation countermeasures by more precisely encompassing the statistical variability of source terms and biokinetic parameters from uptakes from exposed members of the public, first responders, or military personnel.

Margot is the recipient of the:

Margot received his undergraduate degree in Radiological Health Engineering from Texas A&M University. During his undergraduate studies, Margot was a research assistant at the Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies (TIPS). There he studied medical imaging and worked on developing a model for dose from canines in clinical PET-CT cases. As a graduate researcher, Dmitri has worked with the Center for Radiation Protection Knowledge at Oak Ridge National Laboratory studying the biokinetics of beryllium.

Project: Uncertainty Analysis of Dose Coefficients for Nuclear Incident Response

Emmanuel Matey Mate-Kole

Emmanuel Matey Mate-Kole is a Ph.D. student in the NRE/MP Program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on developing stochastic biokinetic models from radiological and nuclear source term intakes as a function of radionuclide inventory and particle size distribution/morphology, solubility, and clearance for expanded inhalation coefficients. This work will be expanded to assess the temporal biodistribution of radionuclides from biokinetic/toxicokinetic models pre-/post- administration of prophylaxis or chelation agents, in addition to employing artificial neural networks to conduct reconstructions for uptake estimation.

Mate-Kole graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi- Ghana with a 4-year BSc in Physics (with Biomedical Physics). He preceded into 2 years Master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering/Energy (M1: Physics and Engineering, and M2: Nuclear Reactor Physics and Engineering) at the Université Paris-Saclay, France. During the first year of his master’s program, he embarked on a research internship at Irène-Joliot Curie Laboratory of Physics of Two Infinities (IJCLAB)-Health Unit, Paris-Saclay. His work focused on the characterization of 3D microdosimeters and the development of a Graphical User Interface using python for application in hadron therapy. Emmanuel also interned (in the last year of master) as a research engineer at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Paris-Saclay-France, with the Reactor Studies and Applied Mathematics unit (SERMA) and under the Laboratory of Stochastic & Deterministic Transport (LTSD) division. Research work at the CEA was focused on the Study of Doubly Angular and Energy Differential Gamma-Ray Albedo Library for Gamma Dose Rate Calculation, involving TRIPOLI-4 Monte Carlo Code and NARMER-1 code.

Mate-Kole is a recipient of the:

  • 2022-2023 Health Physics Society J Newell Stannard Fellowship
  • 2022 Health Physics Society Travel Grant

Project: Evaluation of Exposure Pathway, Internalized Uptakes, and Dosimetry for Military Personnel from Radiological and Toxic Metal Sources; Enhancement of Biokinetics using Physiologically-Based Models for Internalized Radionuclides

Yi (Vanessa) Wei

Yi (Vanessa) Wei is a Ph.D. student in the NRE/MP Program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech. Her primary work is to design a field-deployable body scanner to perform spectroscopy assay of radionuclides inhalation contamination and biodistribution of contaminants in warfighters. Her work also involves validation of biokinetics models with detectors, and evaluation of machine learning techniques for inverse reconstruction utilizing detector responses. Prior to joining the RED² Lab, she worked in the LANNS lab focusing on range verification in proton therapy.
Vanessa received both her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech. Fascinated by radiation physics and its application in the medical field, she then pursuit a second master’s degree in Medical Physics at Georgia Tech. In 2021, she interned as a medical physicist at Varian, a Siemens Healthineers Company. She also had two years of experience working at the teaching assistant for undergraduate and graduate radiation detection lab.

Wei is a recipient of the:

  • 2023 Health Physics Society Travel Grant

Project: Evaluation of Exposure Pathway, Internalized Uptakes, and Dosimetry for Military Personnel from Radiological and Toxic Metal Sources

M.S. Students

Jesse Bruner

Jesse Bruner is an M.S. student in the NRE/MP program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech.  One of his research projects focuses on nuclear material accountancy during disposal and reprocessing of salt-wetted components in molten salt reactors with ORNL. The purpose of this work is to ensure regulatory compliance as well as reduce operational risks and expenses through the measurement and prediction of fuel accumulation (hold-up). His other project focuses on anti-neutrino detection for remote reactor monitoring using pulse-shape discrimination with a water-based liquid scintillation detector with LLNL. Remote detection is desirable because it is less invasive than near-field detection methods; however, the weak anti-neutrino signal and large background present a challenge.

Jesse received his Bachelor of Science in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Florida (UF) in 2020. His undergraduate research involved atmospheric monitoring of the UF Training Reactor argon plume using a NaI scintillation detector, as well as shielding/radiation protection analyses for X-ray backscatter and proton beam systems. Jesse also spent 2021-2022 working at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), first as an intern in the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program, then as a Post-Bachelor’s Research Associate in the National Security Internship Program (NSIP). At PNNL, he worked on implementing nuclear forensic methods to determine the pedigree of historical uranium samples, as well as modeling heavy-ion implantation in uranium-bearing systems.

Project: Nuclear Material Accountancy During Disposal and Reprocessing of Molten Salt Reactor Fuel Salts

Jarred Jordan

Jarred Jordan is an M.S. student in the NRE program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech. His current research is focused on high-fidelity modeling of atmospheric release and dispersion of advanced reactor (AR) source terms within urban environments. Utilizing CFD/CPFD, system behavior analysis, and common reactor planning tools such as MACCS and MELCOR, the objective is to optimize required safety zones for future ARs. The findings from this research are in support of a multidisciplinary collaborative project funded through NEUP: Risk-Informed Consequence-Driven Hybrid Cyber-Physical Protection System Security Optimization for Advanced Reactor Sites.

Jordan graduated from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 2023 with a concentration in astronautics. While there, he worked as an undergraduate researcher within the Space Technologies Laboratory where he collaborated on several publications focused on the optimization spacecraft systems and incorporation of optical machine learning (ML) and neural networks for autonomous complex tasking. Jordan was also an engineer on various student projects—most notably EagleCam and LLAMAS. The first will travel aboard Intuitive Machine’s IM-1 commercial lunar lander; the second will support the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission from inside Crew Dragon. Before arriving at Georgia Tech, Jordan interned at Lockheed Martin (Space) for the Orion crew module under NASA’s Artemis program.

Project: Risk-Informed Consequence-Driven Hybrid Cyber-Physical Protection System Security Optimization for Advanced Reactor Sites

Sergio Ruiz

Sergio Ruiz is a first-year M.S. student in the Medical Physics Program in the RED² Laboratory at Georgia Tech. Sergio graduated from Georgia Tech with a 4-year B.S. in Physics and a minor in Computer Science with a focus in Artificial Intelligence in the Spring of 2023. He conducts research using machine learning methods and biokinetic models to track the development of radiopharmaceutical extravasations (RPEs) in the body. RPEs occur when a radiopharmaceutical is injected into the body but accidentally gets distributed and spills over into surrounding tissue. The results of this project will be helpful to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to establish clear guidelines on how to respond to these incidents.

Texas A&M Current Advisees

Hadyn Kistle

(Current TAMU student advisee) Hadyn Kistle is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Nuclear Engineering in the RED² research group working with Dr. Shaheen Dewji. Her interests include nuclear forensics and health physics applications following radiological and nuclear incidents. Kistle is currently conducting her dissertation work in a joint collaboration between Dr. Dewji and the Nuclear Engineering and Nonproliferation (NEN) Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), focusing on conducting neutron multiplicity counting for emergency response and nuclear nonproliferation applications, integrated with machine learning algorithms for neutron unfolding. Kistle is a student in the Center for Nuclear Security Science and Policy Initiatives (NSSPI) at Texas A&M University.

Kistle is the recipient of the:

Kistle graduated in 2012 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, with a B.S. in Nuclear Engineering. She worked with the Chemistry Division at Los Alamos National Lab in 2016, and has continued working at LANL with M Division (Explosive Science and Shock Physics).

Project: Neutron dosimetry and Assay with a Portable Neutron Multiplicity Detector