Two extraordinary UW–Madison professors — nuclear security specialist Sébastien Philippe and atmospheric scientist Ángel F. Adames Corraliza — have been named 2025 MacArthur "genius grant" fellows by @macfound.org. Congratulations and On, Wisconsin!

Congratulations to Assistant Professor Sébastien Philippe for being selected as a 2025 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. His contributions and creativity are only just beginning and we’re excited to have him as a colleague in NEEP. news.wisc.edu/two-uw-madis...

Also congratulations to my new colleague Sébastien Philippe for his recognition as a MacArthur Fellow!

Holy shit, they did it. They wrote the headline.

Wow! “Crazy Train” on the xylophone! That kinda shreds!😃🫶🏽 #resteasyozzy 💔

Here's what WPR had to say about yesterday's hearing on nuclear energy in Wisconsin

It was great to share my thoughts and expertise with the Wisconsin Assembly Committee on Jobs and Economy today, who were discussing two bills offering support for nuclear energy in our state. Here is my testimony to the committee. (Link to video will come soon)

In case you are interested - tune in live to watch the hearing at the WI legislature on nuclear energy

TFW you find your WI self in NYC when the Brewers are in town for opening day at Yankee stadium (and don’t care)

It is taking all my concentration to not lay hands on the computer driving this workshop that has not maximized the Zoom screen for the remote presentations....

This captures things pretty succinctly...

Maybe monoatomic graphite? Or monoatomic coal?

“A Trump administration plan would end the independence of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where similar oversight muzzling has led to nuclear disasters overseas” Profs. Huff, Corradini and I shared our concerns with @sciam.bsky.social about a dangerous Executive Order from last month

Part 2 of a classic monologue 🍁🇨🇦 youtu.be/_OzbmriDgQc?...

Best Jersey ever. #Canpoli #Canada #Hockey

This is a great program and I'm excited to see my students participating to share their work more broadly

This headline should simply be “Less than 1% of fentanyl is smuggled across the Canadian border, despite Trump lies.” And maybe don’t bury the lede… www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/w...

Thanks to @nuclearkatie.com for teaching me so much about state-level approaches to safeguards and how our Cyclus software can support those needs. Her diverse interests and leadership drive are sure to translate into a career of leadership in nuclear science and technology.

While an immediate funding freeze is a blunt instrument that impacts a wide swath of people from many backgrounds, I can’t help but wonder if the impacts are more concentrated in institutions/organizations and their workforces that are less aligned with the new administration - #itsafeaturenotabug

If you want to dissect the outcome of the last Presidential election, maybe start here 👇

As an engineering professor, I agree with all of this. We may need more engineers, but we need a lot more folks educated to think critically with other ways of knowing the world! In the best case, they all know and value each other’s ways of knowing the world than many do today.

FAFO

In Wisconsin, we have @lawfwd.bsky.social doing some of this work, in case you’re someone who wants to help provide the “mountain of cash” to some of “the best lawyers” for this strategy!

Your regular reminder that the overabundance of guns is not the cause, but a symptom of a society that has normalized the use of guns as an acceptable means of conflict resolution at all levels. c.f. Harris campaign interview

Nuclear energy is going to have to fit into a more flexible energy market in the future, and our faculty and students are exploring how to optimize that complexity

A new Research Opportunities for Undergraduates (REU) Site: Plasma Physics, Plasma Astrophysics, and Fusion at Columbia University bringing together the capabilities of both the Applied Physics and Astronomy/Astrophysics departments at Columbia University. #fusion #fusionenergy #fusionforward

Thirty-five years ago today, I was an 18 year old 2nd year engineering student 550 km away from École Polytechnique. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89c... 1/7

We’re thrilled to home to honoree Ben Lindley & alma mater to 4 others

It’s great to see this kind of progress in developing HALEU fuel for commercial reactors, but reactor.engr.wisc.edu has been doing critical experiments with HALEU for 15 years (as have many other research reactors around the country)

🚨 4️⃣ positions to be filled! Join us in Frankfurt/Darmstadt for exciting work in #nuclear arms control, nonproliferation and disarmament at the crossroads of #science and policy! DLs mid-December and later, vary per position. Working language English. And we move into new fancy office spaces! 🚨

With so much attention on brain injuries in football, why do they always bang their heads together as a form of celebration?

On my way to #ANSWinter2024 - does that get a response here yet?

Am I the only one having trouble with web access to BlueSky?

UK SMR negotiations begin with GE Hitachi, Holtec, Rolls-Royce SMR and Westinghouse - Great British Nuclear says that all four technology providers are "viable options for development" as it prepares to make its choice(s). www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/uk-...

The US nuclear power plant developer Oklo has announced letters of intent from two data centre providers to deliver up to 750 MW (it says it now has a customer pipeline of 2100 MW for its Aurora powerhouse reactors) www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/okl...

Great thread exorcising demons from the history of nuclear technology - or at least from one man's view of it

I had a great time covering a variety of topics in my visit to the Titans of Nuclear podcast. Thanks for inviting me to talk about my own journey, my research, and my outreach interests. www.lastenergy.com/titansofnucl...

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #686,472! It certainly felt pretty quiet back then... I hope we can go up by another 10x soon...

While we watch Obama, Hilary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden wholeheartedly endorse Kamala Harris, it's worth remembering that the following people didn't even go to the RNC this year because they were clearly not welcome: Mike Pence, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, Dick Cheney, and George W Bush.

6 days, 2096 miles of driving (45 hours), $283 in tolls, $317 in gas, 5 return trips across the GW Bridge, 1 meal with my sister/nephew in central Indiana... Operation Move Moira is complete without incident

We're pleased to share our new publication about contrastive machine learning to enable the identification of radioactive material transfers using signals from environmental radiation detectors www.mdpi.com/2913658

I think it's a both/and.... I totally agree that it's not only a digital problem, but the digital technology fills a void left by not going out to play, and thus reduces the incentive for kids to want something different

Our paper "Shutdown Dose Rate with Cartesian Mesh for High-Energy Nuclear Systems" uses model-based reaction rates for activation on a mesh for systems like SNS. Thanks to Nancy Granda-Duarte for all the work to make this happen and to our ORNL collaborators. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I just helped Fill the Hill with #UWFlamingos. You can too at uwflamingos.com #UWFoundation

Our paper "SNM Radiation Signature Classification Using Different Semi-Supervised Machine Learning Models" was chosen for the cover art of this special issue. Thanks to Jordan Stomps for his leadership on this work. www.mdpi.com/2373534 #mdpijne

If you live on the west side of Madison, you may have long envied the festival culture of Madison’s east side… this year’s Westmorland Neighborhood’s Summer Nights series is delivering!!! Here’s to live music and community on the west side!!