Program Leads
We are pleased to have these world-renowned experts to lead our program.
Dr. Todd Allen is Professor at the University of Michigan and a Senior Fellow at Third Way, a DC base Think Tank, supporting their Clean Energy Portfolio. He was the Deputy Director for Science and Technology at the Idaho National Laboratory from January 2013 through January 2016. Prior to INL he was a Professor in the Engineering Physics Department at the University of Wisconsin, a position held from September 2003 through December 2012 and again from January 2016-December 2018. From March 2008-December 2012, he was concurrently the Scientific Director of the Advanced Test Reactor National Scientific User Facility at INL. Prior to joining the University of Wisconsin, he was a Nuclear Engineer at Argonne National Laboratory-West in Idaho Falls. His Doctoral Degree is in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan (1997) and his Bachelor’s Degree in Nuclear Engineering is from Northwestern University (1984). Prior to graduate work, he was an officer in the United States Navy Nuclear Power Program.
Dr. David Novog is an internationally recognized researcher and engineer with 28 years of experience in academia and industry and holds an Industrial Research Chair in Nuclear Safety.
His research interests include reactor risk assessment methodologies, severe accident mitigation, and emergency planning and served in an advisory role on the recent Ontario Nuclear Emergency Response Plan update.
An emerging area of research in Dr. Novog’s group examines the vital role of large and small modular reactors (SMRs) in reducing humankind’s CO2 footprint and he is the Principal Investigator for the federally funded Small Modular Advanced Reactor Training (SMART) program.
Presenters
Michel Berthélemy is the Chief of Staff and Nuclear Strategic Policy Advisor at the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA)
Basma Borai is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the department of Engineering Physics at McMaster University.
Ha Bui is currently a Research Scientist in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE). His research focuses on advancing the science and application of Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) for existing Light Water Reactor-based Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) and advanced nuclear reactors through advanced modeling and simulation solutions.
Diane Cameron is Head of the Nuclear Technology Development and Economics Division at the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). In her role at the NEA, she leads an expert team of economists and scientists that supports energy policy and nuclear energy policy development among NEA Member Countries by advancing evidence-based, authoritative assessments and analyses in the areas of nuclear economics, financing, and cost reduction, as well as nuclear technology, innovation, and the fuel cycle.
William Cook is recognized nationally and internationally as a leading expert in chemistry and corrosion control in nuclear power plants and steam raising systems.
Jason Donev is a tenured faculty member at the University of Calgary, and has received awards for teaching and outreach about energy and climate issues. He heads the Energy Education project, an encyclopedia that covers the entire energy sector. Dr. Donev teaches nuclear power, electricity and thermodynamics, the senior project class for energy and a course that introduces issues related to energy to a non-technical audience, affectionately called ‘energy for everyone.’ Dr. Donev regularly talks with advocates and interested parties all over the political spectrum about various energy issues, especially – but not limited to – nuclear power and climate change.
Peter Elder has recently been appointed as the s new Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) with Canadian Nuclear laboratories. With over 32 years of experience in the nuclear industry, including the management of complex scientific and regulatory issues, Mr. Elder is the ideal executive to help support the delivery and strategic planning of CNL’s Science & Technology mission, addressing challenges of national importance in clean energy, public health, environmental stewardship and national security, while at the same time working with CNL’s Indigenous Relations team to ensure that Indigenous knowledge systems are part of successful project outcomes.
Prior to his position at CNL, Mr. Elder most recently served as the Vice-President of Technical Support and Chief Science Officer at the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC), where he was responsible for the leadership of engineering and scientific staff that provide technical assessments and compliance oversight of nuclear facilities and applications in Canada. In that role, Mr. Elder also helped to establish the CNSC’s strategic direction with respect to nuclear science, research and innovation, and served as the organization’s executive champion for scientific integrity and knowledge management. Mr. Elder’s career at the CNSC dates back all the way to the mid-1990s, and encompasses a wide variety of progressive roles and responsibilities, before which he worked at Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), bringing his career full circle.
Margot has a B. Admin. (Great Distinction) from the University of Regina (1985), an LL.B. (Osgoode) (1987), an LL.M. (Osgoode) (2005) in Constitutional Law with a focus on energy, natural resource, indigenous and environmental issues, and a Ph.D. (University of Amsterdam) in Social and Behaviour Sciences with a thesis “Adaptive Governance of Disaster: Drought and Flood in Rural Areas” published by Springer. Before entering academia Margot was the Assistant General Counsel of the Legal Department at SaskPower.
Her research interests focus on energy, climate change, agriculture, and water. Margot has lead and participated in many SSHRC, NSERC and IDRC research projects, serves on the editorial boards of international journals, is the Lead of the Science, Technology and Innovation Research Cluster at Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy in Regina. Margot is Coordinating Lead Author of a chapter of the Special Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Land and Climate (2019) and a Review Editor for AR6. Margot sits on Future Earth’s Earth Commission Working Group on ‘Transformations’, and is a Scientific Coordinator, Task Force on Earth System Law and a Senior Research Fellow of the Earth Systems Governance Project (Future Earth), Delft, the Netherlands.
Prof. Kish leads a research team focused on corrosion and its control of structural engineering alloys in terms of determining influence of metallurgical aspects on the controlling anode and cathode processes across multi length scales from macro (weld zones) down to nano (grain boundary and second phase particles). He currently is the Scientific Director of the McMaster’s Centre for Automotive Materials and Corrosion. He joined McMaster in 2008 after spending 10 years working industry: two years as a Materials Specialist with NORAM Engineering & Construction Limited (Vancouver, BC) and eight years as a Corrosion Scientist at the Pulp and Paper Research Institute of Canada (Vancouver, BC).
Gaston Meskens holds master degrees in theoretical physics and nuclear engineering from the University of Ghent (Belgium). He works part-time with the Science and Technology Studies group of the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre SCK•CEN and with the Centre for Ethics and Value Inquiry of the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Ghent.
He has twenty+ years of experience in participative and transdisciplinary research related to the ethics of governance of issues such as sustainable development, energy, climate change and radioactive waste management and with the policy processes of the UNFCCC, UNCSD, UN-NPT, and of the research-related activities of the EC.
Since 2006, he is member of the steering committee of the Constituency of Research-oriented Independent NGOs towards the UNFCCC and was chair of the constituency from 2016 to 2018.
In the previous years, he also participated as invited expert in Belgian parliamentary and public hearings on the ethics of risk-inherent technology governance, in several Technical Committees of the IAEA and of the OECD and in UN missions in the frame of sustainable development. At SCK•CEN Gaston Meskens is now working as researcher, writer, lecturer and mediator of dialogue on ethics in relation to science, technology and democratic decision making.
Zahra Mohaghegh is an Associate Professor and Donald Biggar Willett Faculty Scholar in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). She is the Director of the Socio-Technical Risk Analysis (SoTeRiA) Research Laboratory at UIUC, advancing risk science and applications for the safety and economic viability of complex technological systems such as commercial nuclear power plants and advanced reactors. Mohaghegh has published widely on probabilistic risk assessment, probabilistic physics of failure analysis, human-system reliability modeling, risk-informed decision making, and uncertainty analysis. She has consistently applied her expertise in nuclear risk analysis to a wide array of technological challenges, enhancing policymaking and regulation across sectors; for example, she served as a member of the Committee on “Transport Airplane Risk Assessment Methodology” of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Shinya Nagasaki has expertise in the areas of radioactive waste management, nuclear fuel cycle, safety assessment of repository and nuclear fuel cycle facilities, migration of actinides, fission products and heavy metals in geosphere and biosphere, nuclear technology in society, nuclear proliferation and security
Dr. Krishna Podila is a highly-skilled engineer and a prolific researcher with expertise in Computational Fluid Dynamics. He is a Principal Scientist and a Section Head for Computational Fluid Dynamics in the Thermalhydraulics and Safety Analysis Branch in the Advanced Reactor Directorate at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. Dr. Podila is well known for applying the fluid mechanics and fundamental physics principles in resolving varied scales present within the conventional and advanced reactor systems. Krishna has authored many international journal publications in the field of CFD and has presented at several leading international conferences. He also served on NSERC mechanical engineering subcommittee.
Madelena Spencer is a Research Scientist at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories
Appointed Dean of the Faculty of Energy Systems and Nuclear Science, Dr. Tokuhiro brings over 20 years of diverse nuclear engineering experience in academia and industry to Ontario Tech.
Most recently he served as Senior Principal Engineer of NuScale Power LLC, a nuclear energy startup company in Corvallis, Oregon, funded by the DOE and Fluor Corporation. In this role, he developed the technical basis of the Emergency Planning Zone of the NuScale Small Modular Reactor, which led the company to complete the first-ever submission of the Design Certification Application to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) in January 2017.
From 2007 to 2014, he served as Professor of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, and Director of the Nuclear Engineering Graduate Program at the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. Previously, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas; as well as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and Director and USNRC Senior Reactor Operator of the research reactor at the University of Missouri in Rolla, Missouri.