Stanek elected fellow by the American Nuclear Society

Chris Stanek, the director of Nuclear Energy Programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, has been named a fellow of the American Nuclear Society. Nominated by his peers in the nuclear science and engineering community, Stanek earned the distinction of fellow for his “pioneering contributions to fuel and materials research and his exceptional leadership in advancing modeling and simulation for nuclear energy.”

“We’re proud that Chris’ leadership in advanced nuclear energy technologies has been recognized by the American Nuclear Society,” said Pat Fitch, deputy Lab director for Science, Technology and Engineering at Los Alamos. “As an innovative scientist and a talented program manager, he is building and directing capabilities that have Los Alamos poised to make a key difference for civilian nuclear energy in the United States.”

Stanek manages projects that use and build civilian nuclear research and technology capabilities to advance nuclear energy science. He was the national technical director of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Engineering Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program from 2015-24, where he helped develop modeling and simulation tools to accelerate the deployment of advanced nuclear energy technologies. Before leading the NEAMS program, he led the nuclear materials and fuels research effort for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors, a DOE Energy Innovation Hub that partners government, industry and academia for research and technology development in the nuclear energy enterprise. For his efforts in these programs, the Laboratory awarded Stanek the Fellows’ Prize for Leadership in 2016.

Stanek’s research interests have focused on the interaction between multidimensional defects in ceramics, primarily via atomistic simulation techniques, with a particular interest in materials for nuclear energy, including transmutation fuels, crystalline waste forms and scintillator radiation detectors. He has published more than 120 papers on using computational materials science methods to study materials important to the nuclear fuel cycle and has an h-index of 47. He serves as an associate editor of the Journal of Nuclear Materials and is a member of the editorial advisory board for the journal Nuclear Engineering and Design.

Stanek earned his doctoral degree in materials from Imperial College London in 2003. His undergraduate degree is in materials science and engineering from Cornell University, where he earned the prestigious John McMullen Dean’s Scholarship.

Established in 1954, the American Nuclear Society “is committed to advancing, fostering and promoting the development and application of nuclear sciences and technologies to benefit society.” Stanek joins six other current Laboratory scientists as a member of the society.

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