American Nuclear Society (ANS) national scholarships have been awarded to two students of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) at Illinois.
Kathryn A. Mummah of Wheaton, Illinois, has been chosen for the ANS Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences Division Undergraduate Scholarship. Daniel O’Grady of Evergreen Park, Illinois, has won the ANS Raymond DiSalvo Memorial Scholarship.
This is the second year in a row that Mummah, a senior, has won the Decommissioning & Environmental Sciences scholarship, awarded to engineering or science major students pursuing one of a number of areas: decommissioning/decontamination, management/characterization of radioactive waste, restoration of the environment, or nuclear engineering.
Mummah, the 2015-16 president of the ANS student chapter at Illinois, has been recognized over the past year with a number of leadership awards, including a Commendation for Service and Leadership at the spring 2016 ANS Student Conference, the William R. Schowalter Award from the student-operated Engineering Council and the campus Student Affairs Office’s Edith and Harry Darby Leadership Scholarship. She also won the 2016 NPRE departmental Catherine Pritchard Undergraduate Scholarship.
The DiSalvo Scholarship awarded to O’Grady is named for Raymond DiSalvo, who joined ANS in 1974 and very quickly became an active and important participant in their technical conferences. He was highly respected by his colleagues for his expertise in several areas on nuclear energy such as risk assessment, human factors, and waste management. His contributions to the ANS went beyond the purely technical realm to include leadership and governance. He was very active in the ANS Nuclear Reactor Safety Division as a member of both the Program Committee and the Executive Committee.
DiSalvo, an atomic safety specialist, was part of the team that sought to control damage at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania in 1979. An expert in reactor safety, he also conducted research in ways to prevent and limit damage in toxic chemical accidents.
In addition to the DiSalvo Scholarship, O’Grady also was the 2016 recipient of the departmental Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award.