Director's Message 

Since its founding in 1991, our Center has become a premier university-based research and professional organization in the areas of structures, equipment, and piping in nuclear power plants and related facilities.

This Fall, we are pleased to announce the addition of Jim Rispoli as a Professor of the Practice in the Center Faculty. He was Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management and, before that, Director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Engineering and Construction Management. He is currently President and CEO of Project Time & Cost.

Our faculty team – all members of the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering at North Carolina State University - now has the following lineup:

• Joe DeCarolis: interdisciplinary research on energy and environment issues    with the goal of promoting long term sustainability

• Abhinav Gupta, Associate Center Director: seismic fragility of structures and    piping, response spectrum method, seismic qualification of equipment,    reliability-based design and risk-informed regulation

• George List: modeling, simulation, and optimization of transport systems and    networks; hazardous materials logistics, especially for spent nuclear fuel,    multi-objective algorithms for route selection and emergency response team    siting

• Min Liu: performance and productivity improvements for construction    projects and lean construction

• Vernon Matzen, Center Director: experimental and computational analysis of    piping components; seismic response of unanchored objects

• Jim Rispoli: planning and construction of nuclear facilities to process waste to    permit safe long term disposition

In addition, John Gilligan, who is a Professor of Nuclear Engineering, Director, US DOE Nuclear Energy University programs, and former Vice Chancellor for Research, will Chair our Senior Advisory Board. John’s research includes nuclear fission and fusion systems, high power density plasmas, plasma-material interactions, and engineering educational methods

Most importantly, we have a group of dedicated graduate and undergraduate students working with us on all of the Center’s research and outreach activities. Elsewhere in this website, you will find details on both the students and the faculty. Graduates from our Center program hold or have held positions at AREVA, Duke Energy, Progress Energy, Westinghouse, Black and Veatch, among others.

Our team has developed and continues to develop sophisticated engineering tools that can result in substantial savings over the lifetime of an existing plant. We believe that sophisticated engineering tools, based on sound structural, material, and computational principles in both deterministic and risk-informed environments, need not be complicated or cumbersome. Often, the more sophisticated the technology, the simpler and more elegant are the solutions.

In addition to our research, development, and engineering services, our Center offers a wide range of short courses and other training opportunities. These courses and training sessions are given by Center faculty and outside professionals with specialized expertise in the design and construction of nuclear facilities.

We invite you to join us in this exciting endeavor. Please contact me if you would like to discuss Center membership details - I can be reached at (919) 515-7736 or at matzen@ncsu.edu. I look forward to hearing from you.