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Division Spotlight
Human Factors, Instrumentation & Controls
Improving task performance, system reliability, system and personnel safety, efficiency, and effectiveness are the division's main objectives. Its major areas of interest include task design, procedures, training, instrument and control layout and placement, stress control, anthropometrics, psychological input, and motivation.
Meeting Spotlight
ANS Student Conference 2025
April 3–5, 2025
Albuquerque, NM|The University of New Mexico
Standards Program
The Standards Committee is responsible for the development and maintenance of voluntary consensus standards that address the design, analysis, and operation of components, systems, and facilities related to the application of nuclear science and technology. Find out What’s New, check out the Standards Store, or Get Involved today!
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Colin Judge: Testing structural materials in Idaho’s newest hot cell facility
Idaho National Laboratory’s newest facility—the Sample Preparation Laboratory (SPL)—sits across the road from the Hot Fuel Examination Facility (HFEF), which started operating in 1975. SPL will host the first new hot cells at INL’s Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) in 50 years, giving INL researchers and partners new flexibility to test the structural properties of irradiated materials fresh from the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) or from a partner’s facility.
Materials meant to withstand extreme conditions in fission or fusion power plants must be tested under similar conditions and pushed past their breaking points so performance and limitations can be understood and improved. Once irradiated, materials samples can be cut down to size in SPL and packaged for testing in other facilities at INL or other national laboratories, commercial labs, or universities. But they can also be subjected to extreme thermal or corrosive conditions and mechanical testing right in SPL, explains Colin Judge, who, as INL’s division director for nuclear materials performance, oversees SPL and other facilities at the MFC.
SPL won’t go “hot” until January 2026, but Judge spoke with NN staff writer Susan Gallier about its capabilities as his team was moving instruments into the new facility.
2020 ANS Virtual Winter Meeting Plenary Special Session Speaker
Texas A&M University
Dr. Shaheen A. Dewji is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Nuclear Security Science and Policy Initiatives (NSSPI). Dr. Dewji completed her Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Nuclear and Radiological Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. She received her Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
In her prior role at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dewji was Radiological Scientist in the Center for Radiation Protection Knowledge, where her work included assessment of patient release criteria for nuclear medicine patients, as well as development of dose coefficients associated with the external exposure and internal uptake of radionuclides from contaminated environmental media and emergency response. Prior, Dr. Dewji was a Nondestructive Assay Systems Engineer with the Safeguards and Security Technology Group at ORNL, where she employed gamma-ray methods for nuclear material control and accountancy for front and back ends of the fuel cycle.
Having established the Radiological Engineering, Detection, and Dosimetry (RED2) Laboratory at Texas A&M University, Dewji’s research group has focused on harnessing both computational capabilities in Monte Carlo and hybrid deterministic radiation transport modeling, in addition to gamma ray spectroscopy measurements, for applications in radiation protection, dosimetry, health physics, and nuclear materials accounting. Research activities in computational dosimetry investigates the development of dose coefficients using age/sex-specific anthropomorphic computational phantoms and radionuclide biokinetic models for occupational nuclear workers, members of the public, nuclear medicine, space, defense, and emergency response. Research activities in radiation detection employ validation and verification of gamma-ray spectroscopic detector responses for contaminated environmental media; field triage assessment of radiation uptake during nuclear, radiological, and fission product release events; and nuclear materials control, accounting, and safeguards of special nuclear material.
Dewji has been an active member of the American Nuclear Society (ANS) since 2005 where she has served in various roles, including the Executive Committee, Officer, and Chair, for both the Radiation Protection and Shielding Division and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy Division. Currently, Dewji is the General Chair of the Joint 14th International Conference on Radiation Shielding/2021 ANS Radiation Protection and Shielding Division Topical and is a member of the ANS President’s ad-hoc committee on the Low Dose Grand Challenge. Dewji is also an active member of the Health Physics Society (HPS), where she has served as Board Liaison of the Homeland Security Section, member of the Government Relations Committee, HPS President’s Special Task Force on Radiation Protection Needs, representative on the ISO/TC 85/SC2, and recipient of the esteemed 2018 Health Physics Society Elda E. Anderson Award.
Last modified October 15, 2020, 2:50pm EDT
