L to R: Marco Riva; Lauren Garrison, Session Chair; Mahmoud Lotfy.

Mahmoud Lotfy and Marco Riva, both Ph.D. students in MAE working in Professor Mohamed Abdou’s Fusion Science and Technology (FST) Center, were awarded Outstanding Student Paper and Honorable Mention Student Paper, respectively, at the prestigious international TOFE conference in Philadelphia, PA. The conference was the 22nd American Nuclear Society Topical Meeting on the Technology of Fusion Energy – TOFE 2016, With the theme of “Advancing the Globalization of Fusion Energy Technology”, the conference was attended by scientists and engineers from countries around the world, including Germany, Italy, France, Russia, the UK, Japan, China, Korea, and the United States. The conference papers covered broad range of cutting-edge fusion nuclear technology.

Mahmoud Lotfy is a third-year Ph.D. student whose research involves modelling and experiments including first-of-a- kind experiment to investigate the effects of multi-field fusion nuclear environment on the thermomechanics behavior of ceramic breeder blankets with many materials and interfaces. His experimental work also involves developing novel methods for laboratory simulation of volumetric heating.  He collaborates with Dr. Alice Ying and Dr. Jon Van Lew in Prof. Abdou’s FST Center as part of the team researching tritium breeding technologies for fusion reactors. Mahmoud was presented the award in recognition of his “outstanding student research paper titled Thermally-induced Stress and Relaxation of Ceramic Breeder Pebble Beds.”

Marco Riva is a first-year Ph.D. student working on advanced 3-D modelling of neutron and gamma-ray transport in tritium breeding blankets for fusion power reactors. Marco’s paper was titled “Reducing the Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio in Fusion Blankets.”

More information on the research, laboratory, and recent publications can be found on the FST website: http://www.fusion.ucla.edu/