IEEE NPSS Merit Award

Christine Coverdale received her B.S. in Physics and Math in 1988 from the University of Puget Sound, followed by her M.S. (1989) and Ph.D. (1995) in Engineering/Applied Science from the University of California, Davis.  Her Ph.D. research, performed as a student employee in laser program at Lawrence Livermore National Lab, forcused on the experimental study of Stimulated Raman Scattering (forward and backward) driven by a high-intensity short pulse laser.  After receiving her Ph.D., she joined Physics International in San Leandro, CA, where she performed experimental research on pulsed-power-driven Z-pinch and Bremsstrahlung x-ray sources.

Dr. Coverdale joined Sandia National Laboratories in 1997, where she is currently a Senior Scientist.  She has been involved in a broad range of high energy density plasma experiments as a lead experimenter for the development of, and application of, cold/warm K-shell x-ray and gas-puff neutron sources for radiation effects experiments on the Z machine, the world’s largest pulsed power facility.  As part of that work, she pioneered several new capabilities (application testing platforms, diagnostic techniques, and analysis methods) and has provided ongoing consulting and mentoring support for radiation effects and z-pinch source development projects. Dr. Coverdale has collaborated extensively with researchers at universities, in industry, and at other national labs, with more than 120 authored/co-authored publications.  She received the 2016 IEEE Plasma Science and Applications Committee (PSAC) Award, and a 2016 Society of Women Engineers Prism Award, and was a committee member of the 2020 National Academies Decadal Assessment of Plasma Science.

Dr. Coverdale also has a wide range of community service in APS and IEEE roles, including technical program committee roles for the APS-DPP and IEEE ICOPS conferences, serving as an elected member of the Executive Committees for APS-DPP and IEEE-PSAC, and the IEEE Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society Administrative Committee (PSAC representative).  She served for 11 years as the Senior Editor for High Energy Density Physics for the Transactions on Plasma Science (TPS), and as a guest editor multiple times for TPS, in addition to regularly reviewing manuscripts for a variety of other journals.  She has also been a member of numerous award and Fellow committees for APS and IEEE.  Dr. Coverdale is a fellow of both the IEEE and APS.

Citation: “For pioneering contributions to z-pinch physics, and leadership and innovation in developing plasma K-shell X-ray and neutron sources for practical use”

IEEE NPSS Richard F. Shea Distinguished Member Award

Ralf Engels has been project manager for neutron detectors at the Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS) of the Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH since 2017. Currently, he is working on a new high-rate, pixelated detector to be installed at the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund as well as on a BMBF funded project for the single crystal diffractometer HEiDi at MLZ/FRM-II in Munich. As a member of the Detector Technology Group, with his many years of experience, he is supporting, maintaining, and developing detectors for new instruments at the JCNS.

Engels is a distinguished member of the technical staff at the JCNS. His basic fields of research are the development, construction, and operation of advanced detector systems for thermal neutrons. After his study in electronic design at the Aachen University of Applied Sciences, he wrote his diploma thesis in the detector group (1994). This was followed by the PhD (2012) at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.

From 2004-2014, he was head of the “Neutron- and Gamma-Detector” group at the Central Institute of Engineering, Electronics and Analytics, Electronic Systems (ZEA-2) of the Forschungszentrum Jülich. He was Group Leader and also a staff engineer and contributed to projects in other departments. In addition to the neutron detector developments, he was also involved in designs for biological detector systems and medical detector systems. He has close collaborations with companies and Universities who are working in the nuclear instrumentation field. His other activities include the design of detector readout electronics and DAQ systems.

Engels was in charge of the development of alternatives for neutron ³He detectors. A new technology, built for the Six Anvil Press for High Pressure Radiography and Diffraction (SAPHIR) based on wave‑length-shifting fiber technology, was delivered for setup at the research reactor FRM-II in Munich.

Ralf Engels (M ´98, SM ´12) has been interested in IEEE activities for many years and has attended the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference since 1995. The IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) has been successful in bringing people together from different scientific areas and different countries. In helping to achieve this goal, Engels served in various roles such as Deputy General Chair, Conference Coordinator, Treasurer, Workshop Chairman and other positions. In 2013 – 2014, he served a second term on the Radiation Instrumentation Steering Committee. In 2012 and 2013, he was Joint Oversight Subcommittee (JOS) Chairman and member of the committee as past chair until end of 2015. Beginning 2017, he was appointed Assistant NPSS Treasurer and took over as NPSS Treasurer in 2019 and continues to today.

In his spare time, he enjoys family outings with his wife and two adult children.

Citation: “For outstanding contributions to the Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society as treasurer, to the success of NSS MIC RTSD conferences over many years especially the virtual conferences of 2020 and 2021, and for contributions and leadership to the Radiation Instrumentation Technical Committee.”

IEEE NPSS Early Achievement Award

Yangyang Fu received his bachelor’s degree from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2010 and his Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 2015, respectively. He was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Michigan State University from 2016 to 2021. His research interests include electrical breakdown, low-temperature plasma physics and applications, and scaling laws. His Ph.D. research focused on developing similarity laws for low-pressure gas discharges, elucidating the underlying mechanisms of modified breakdown curves. His subsequent work developed similarity theory for radio-frequency discharge plasmas and demonstrated scale-invariant electron dynamics in similar discharges. This work extends similarity methods from local to nonlocal electron kinetics regimes and inspires the development of scaling networks for upscaled plasma systems. Another important contribution is the development of computational and simulation models to quantify microgap breakdown characteristics. His work illustrated the effects of electrode surface morphologies on microscale gas breakdown and revealed mode transition across length and pressure scales. The investigations are crucial for the design of miniaturized microelectronics, micro-switches, and MEMS or NEMS-based plasma devices. Dr. Fu was appointed Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University in 2021 and became an Associate Director of the High Voltage and Insulation Research Institute in 2022. He is currently an Associate Professor in charge of the Gas Discharge and Plasma Laboratory at Tsinghua University. He has extended his research to applied plasmas and led a team developing advanced models and experimental diagnostics for laser-sustained plasmas, high-frequency discharges, electron emission sources and novel microplasma devices.

Citation: “For contributions to development of similarity theory and scaling laws for low-temperature plasmas and understanding of electrical breakdown and gas discharge plasma sources at miniaturized dimensional scales.”

IEEE NPSS Glenn F. Knoll Graduate Education Grant

Ming Fang received the NPSS Glenn F. Knoll Graduate Educational Grant as a graduate student in Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign under the guidance of Prof. Angela Di Fulvio. He obtained his Master’s degree from the same institution (2019) and his Bachelor’s in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Science and Technology of China (2018).

Ming’s research focuses on experimental and computational methods to safeguard nuclear materials in advanced nuclear reactors. Throughout his Ph.D., Ming has gained expertise in various aspects of nuclear science research, from designing and testing new neutron multiplicity counters to developing accelerated yet accurate radiation transport Monte Carlo methods and iterative imaging algorithms. This work resulted in over 25 journal publications and conference proceedings.

Ming’s research culminated in the demonstration of a new method to tag and track fuel in pebble bed reactors. This multi-mode imaging method allowed us to identify a single fuel pebble in a library of hundreds of thousands in a few minutes, all while being compatible with reactor operations. This research laid the groundwork for its practical implementation, through an ongoing project sponsored by the Department of Energy, showcasing its feasibility at scale.

IEEE NPSS Ronald J. Jaszczak Graduate Award

Sara Kurkowska graduated from Pomeranian Medical University (Szczecin, Poland), earning her medical degree in 2020, followed by a physics degree from the University of Szczecin in 2022. She started pursuing a residency program in nuclear medicine at Department of Nuclear Medicine of Pomeranian Medical University while pursuing a Ph.D. in internal dosimetry for radiopharmaceutical therapies.

In 2023, as part of her Ph.D., Sara joined the Quantitative Radiomolecular Imaging and Therapy laboratory at the BC Cancer Research Institute in Vancouver, Canada, focusing on advancing personalized approaches for radiopharmaceutical therapies through dosimetry-based methods. Sara has been working on cross-calibrating institutions for pan-Canadian clinical trial and conducting pre-clinical and clinical dosimetry calculations for various ongoing trials.

Driven by a commitment to simplifying dosimetry calculations, Sara worked on developing a comprehensive python package PyTheranostics that streamlines pre-clinical dosimetry, facilitates extrapolation to human data, and enables personalized patient dosimetry. Additionally, Sara investigates variability sources in internal dosimetry workflows as part of her involvement in the Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Lu-177 Dosimetry Challenge.

IEEE NPSS Women in Engineering Leadership Development Travel Grant

Audrey Corbeil Therrien is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Université de Sherbrooke in Québec, Canada.  She currently holds the Tier-2 Canada Research Chair in real-time embedded intelligence for ultra-high rate detectors. She has worked at CERN (2015) in Geneva, Switzerland and at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory where she held a Banting Fellowship (2018-2020). Her research aims to improve real-time analyses at the edge with the integration of machine learning in high performance radiation instrumentation systems. She has been strongly involved with the promotion of technical and scientific careers for diverse groups with Université de Sherbrooke, SLAC, Stanford University, local non-profits and at several conferences. She received several awards, including the 2017 IEEE Glenn F. Knoll Graduate Educational Grant, the 2019 Best Thesis Award in Science and Engineering at the Université de Sherbrooke and a finalist for the 2023 Prix Honoris Genius — Relève of the Ordre des Ingénieurs du Québec. She contributes to the organization of several conferences including IEEE NSS 2023 and IEEE NEWCAS 2024, and is the NPSS Women in Engineering liaison.

IEEE NPSS Graduate Scholarship Awards

Timothy Wong received the M.Eng degree in electrical and mechanical engineering with international study from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K., in 2020, undertaking a one-year exchange with the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is currently pursuing the degree of Ph.D. in electronic and electrical engineering at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K., with the High Voltage Technologies Research Group. His research has contributed towards deepening the understanding of impulsive interfacial breakdown at solid-solid and solid-gas dielectric interfaces, computational modelling of fast transient gas discharge phenomena, and novel applications of pulsed power. He has particular interests in innovative methods for the analytical and computational modelling of physical phenomena relevant to pulsed power and plasma technology. Timothy has received a number of awards and accolades during his undergraduate and postgraduate studies, including the Institute of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) Student Award (2020), IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) Best Poster Award (11th Universities High Voltage Network Colloquium Southampton,  UK, 2018) , IEEE DEIS Best Oral Presentation Award (14th Universities High Voltage Network Colloquium, Cardiff, UK, 2022), and IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) Outstanding Student Paper Award (Pulsed Power Conference, San Antonio, USA, 2023). He continues his membership with the IMechE, the IET, and the IEEE DEIS and IEEE NPSS, and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA).

Xun Li was born in Chengdu, China. Xun received his B. S. (2013) in Materials Science and Engineering and Ph. D in Materials Processing Engineering (2019) from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China. He is currently pursuing a Ph. D degree in Electrical Engineering with the Radiation Effects and Reliability Group in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Xun’s main research interests are in the investigation of the combination of radiation and stress induced defect evolution and gate leakage of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs. In the past few years, his research indicates that, at higher proton irradiation fluences, GaN based HEMTs’ positive V_TH shifts and degradation of peak G_M are observed due to the creation and/or activation of acceptor-like defects caused by displacement-damage-induced the creation of N vacancies and dehydrogenation of pre-existing Fe_Ga-H and/or O_N-H complexes. The Fe_Ga defects shown to be responsible for the major peak in noise magnitude are most likely located in the GaN buffer layer and function as G–R centers in these and other GaN-based HEMTs. Xun has more than 20 publications on radiation effects in microelectronic devices and materials, and these papers have been cited ~430 times (citation h factor = 12, Google scholar). Xun is also serving as a reviewer for ~6 electrical engineering related journals.