Nuclear engineering doctoral student Devon Drey received a 2021 fellowship from the Graduate Advancement Training and Education (GATE) program hosted by The Science Alliance from his time working in Associate Professor and Pietro F. Pasqua Fellow Maik Lang’s research group. A total of six recipients were awarded fellowships from a pool of 16 applicants.
GATE awardees receive a 12-month appointment including a $30,000 stipend, tuition waiver, and health insurance.
Drey’s research project, “Investigating Disorder in Fluorite-related Complex Oxides using a Coupled Experimental and Modeling Approach,” aims to use the advanced materials characterization techniques available at the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to explicate defect behavior and disordering over a range of length scales in fluorite-related oxides.
Specific project goals involve performing high-resolution neutron total scattering at the SNS on complex oxides disordered by various means—changes in chemistry, intense irradiation, high temperature, etc.—and applying Reverse Monte Carlo modeling to resulting experimental data with guidance from a leading expert in the field, ORNL Neutron Scattering Division Diffraction group leader Matthew Tucker.
Completion of this project will result in a comprehensive description of disordering in fluorite-related oxide materials across multiple length scales.