Congratulations! Dr. Fan Zhang, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the lab director of the iFAN lab, has been awarded a Distinguished Early Career Award from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy (NE). Her awards of $625,000 over five years will provide support for her and the lab to develop a robot-assisted online monitoring and maintenance system for nuclear reactors. Her project will integrate a nuclear power plant (NPP) digital twin with data from a pressurized water reactor (PWR) simulator to enable robotic navigation and manipulation research, and will be used to develop algorithms for autonomous fault detection, diagnosis, and risk assessment integrating robot assistance.
Dr. Fan Zhang Receives DOE-NE Distinguished Early Career Award
