Sometimes patterns repeat in nature. Spirals appear in sunflowers and hurricanes. Branches occur in veins and lightning. Limiao Zhang, a doctoral student in MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, has found another similarity: between street traffic and boiling water, with implications for preventing nuclear meltdowns. Growing up in China, Zhang enjoyed watching her father repair things around the house. He couldn’t fulfill his dream of becoming an engineer, instead joining the police force, but Zhang did have that opportunity and studied mechanical engineering at Three Gorges University. Being one of four girls among about 50 boys in the major didn’t discourage her. “My father always told me girls can do anything,” she says. She graduated at the top of her class. In college, she and a team of classmates won a national engineering competition. They designed and built a model of a carousel powered by solar, hydroelectric, and pedal power. One judge asked how long the system could operate safely. “I didn’t have a perfect answer,” she recalls. She realized that engineering means designing products that not only function, but are resilient. So for her master’s degree, at Beihang University, she turned to industrial engineering and analyzed the reliability of critical infrastructure, in particular traffic networks....

Michael J. Driscoll, MIT professor emeritus of nuclear science and engineering (NSE), recognized for his leadership in research and devotion to mentorship and education, died peacefully on Dec. 31, 2020, in Boston. He was 86. Born in Peekskill, New York, in 1934, Driscoll received his BS in chemical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Soon after graduating he joined the nuclear U.S. Navy and served as a commissioned officer on the USS Nautilus, the world's first operational nuclear-powered submarine. His four years “working for Admiral Rickover as a nuclear propulsion engineer” sparked a lifelong passion for nuclear technology and engineering and inspired his career in research and teaching. Driscoll first came to the MIT Department of Nuclear Engineering (as it was known at that time) as a graduate student in 1962. He earned his doctorate under the supervision of Professor Irving Kaplan and was invited to join the department’s faculty in 1966 by then-department head Manson Benedict....

Midway through this year, MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) senior Sean Lowder traveled to Washington, to interview for a job. He had three technical interviews scheduled, plus a meeting with the admiral in charge of nuclear engineering for the U.S. Navy. They’d told him that his entire transcript was fair game for questioning, so Lowder had hit the books to prepare. Among those classes was one about nuclear reactor physics and the study of how neutrons can interact with materials in a reactor and change the reactor’s energy output. “It was one of the most challenging courses, but also one of the most interesting,” Lowder says. He got the job he was gunning for. After graduation he’ll relocate to D.C. and join the engineering team responsible for the designs of nuclear reactors used to power the U.S. Navy’s fleet of submarines and aircraft carriers. Just a few years ago, before he came to MIT, Lowder didn’t know much about engineering. But an influential teacher at his high school, Tabor Academy in Marion, Massachusetts, got him interested in science and technology. That same teacher encouraged him to apply to MIT and to also consider the military academies....