Prashant K. Jain

Additional Title

• Interim Section Head, Advanced Reactor Engineering & Development, Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division

Dr. Prashant Jain is the interim Section Head for the Advanced Reactor Engineering and Development Section in the Nuclear Energy & Fuel Cycle Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He is responsible for providing technical leadership and line management support for 60+ research and technical staff to pursue scientific and technical innovations in enhancing nuclear safety, security, and performance of nuclear facilities and applications; improving construction, operation, maintenance, and integration of nuclear energy with other sources; de-risking advanced reactors through innovative designs, simulations, and prototype demonstrations; advancing risk-informed decision-making, compliance, and capacity building for nuclear energy; and strengthening digital twins for fission, fusion & other energy systems through I&C, data, and models.

With over 20 years of experience, Dr. Jain specializes in advanced multi-physics modeling, applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence for nuclear digital twins, nuclear thermal design and safety analyses, safety/security integration in reactor designs, computational fluid dynamics (CFD), single- and two-phase turbulent flows and heat transfer, analytical benchmarks, the lattice Boltzmann method, and parallel scientific software development. Dr. Jain is a permanent member of the Advisory Board of the Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan (NERS). He also serves as the lead proposal coordinator from ORNL for the NNSA Office of International Nuclear Security’s Engineering and Technology Solutions Call for Proposals. He is a guest editor for the Nuclear Engineering and Design Journal’s Special Issue on Outcomes and Achievements from Researchers Orienting the Future of Nuclear Fission Technology, an associate editor for the Frontiers in Energy Research (Nuclear Energy) Special Issue on Shaping the Future of Nuclear Assets with Digital Twins, and an associate editor for the Applied Sciences’ Special Issue on CFD Analysis for Nuclear Engineering. Dr. Jain is a recipient of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Mark Mills Award for his doctoral research on lattice Boltzmann methods and UT-Battelle’s 2019 Mission Support Award for his contributions to the HFIR event causal analysis.