FUTURE Postdocs

Jijo Christudasjustus (PNNL)

Dr. Jijo Christudasjustus is a post-doctoral researcher in the Physical and Computational Sciences Directorate at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He finished his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University. His expertise is in understanding the microstructure-corrosion property relationship using transmission electron microscopy and surface-sensitive techniques such as XPS and ToF-SIMS on lightweight alloys, high-entropy alloys, and additively manufactured stainless steels. For the FUTURE project, Jijo will synthesize epitaxial thin films of metals and oxides by molecular beam epitaxy as model systems. These films will be utilized to study the coupled effects of irradiation effect and corrosion for materials relevant to next-generation nuclear reactor designs. Apart from research, he likes to sketch and explore new places and food during his leisure.

Peter Hatton (LANL)

Adric Jones (BGSU)

Adric is a post-doctoral researcher at Bowling Green State University. He is helping to design a positron beam system for the in situ study of radiation damage in shielding materials under thrust-1 of FUTURE. In his spare time he likes to play billiards and go hiking.

Mira Khair (UTSA)

Dr. Mira Khair is a Postdoctoral researcher at the Extreme Environments Materials Laboratory within the departments of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas at San Antonio since September 2023. Her research focuses on materials fabrication (UN, UB2, alloys) and the characterization of their microstructure. Prior to joining UTSA, Dr. Khair served as a Postdoc Researcher at the University of Lille, where she worked on UMo microstructural characterization in collaboration with Framatome. In December 2019, she defended her thesis in Physical-Chemistry of Condensed Materials at the University of Bordeaux, France. The entirety of her thesis work was conducted at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), concentrating on the fabrication of innovative UO2 fuel for Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) to enhance corrosion resistance of the fuel cladding and introduce a new fuel to the nuclear market

Sara Mastromarino (UCB)

Sara Mastromarino is a Post-Doc at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) while she is finishing her PhD in nuclear engineering at Delft University of Technology. Sara spent two years during her PhD at the European Commission-Joint Research Centre working on the chemical and thermo-physical characterization of high temperature molten salt fuels and coolants. She was involved in the international project SAMOFAR for the development of MSFRs. At UCB Sara works on the elemental and physico-chemical  characterization of molten salts. She is involved in a broad range  of projects:  high temperature optical spectroscopy, elemental analysis and digestion methods of molten halides, measurements of liquid density of molten salts, and molten salt tribology and rheology. She overall supports the group with design and planning for the experimental infrastructure (e.g.design of a glove-box train for beryllium-containing and actinide-containing molten salts). Outside of the office, she is a passionate triathlete and she gained top places in several running competitions.   

Sean Mills (UCB)

Franziska Schmidt (LANL)

Franziska Schmidt is a postdoc at Los Alamos National Laboratory and studies corrosion phenomena and radiation damage in heavy liquid metal and molten salt environments. In her free time, she hunts fossils and goes climbing.

Ryan Schoell (NCSU)