On February 14th join Professor Srinivasan Chandrasekar.

Professor Srinivasan Chandrasekar of Purdue University will speak about Prince Rupert’s Drops: 400- year-old Mystery Revealed. Prince Rupert’s drops, special “glass bubbles”, possessing very striking mechanical properties, have been in existence since before 1625. Forerunners of modern toughened glasses, they exhibit a paradoxical combination of strength and fragility that excited the imagination of natural philosophers of yore. The head of a drop does not break when hammered on an anvil: yet when its tail is broken with mild finger pressure applied, the drop disintegrates explosively into fine powder. We unravel this curious behavior using high speed photography, fractography and stress measurements, thereby providing the solution to a 400-year old conundrum.

Srinivasan Chandrasekar is Professor in the Schools of Industrial Engineering and Materials Engineering at Purdue University. His research and teaching interests are in manufacturing, materials processing, fracture and tribology. His recent contributions all stem from the use of high-speed imaging techniques to characterize material flow and fracture phenomena at high spatial and temporal resolution. “Prince Rupert’s Drops” exemplifies this approach.

Johns Hopkins University Professor Peter Searson

will speak on The blood-brain barrier: what is it and what does it do? The blood-brain barrier is a 600 km network of blood vessels that supplies fuel to the brain while at the same time providing protection from anything in circulation that could compromise normal brain function. We start by describing how the blood-brain barrier performs these functions. We then discuss the role of the blood-brain barrier in health and disease. Finally, we describe how tissue-engineering can be used create models of the blood-brain barrier and how these models can be used to contribute to understanding disease progression and developing strategies for rejuvenation and repair.

Searson received his PhD from the University of Manchester in England in 1982 and was a post-doctoral associate in Ron Latanision’s lab at MIT. Since 1990 he has been at Johns Hopkins University. He was co-founder and director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Nanobiotechnology from 2006 to 2016, and holds appointments in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the Department of Oncology. He is the Joseph R. and Lynne C. Reynolds Professor of Engineering at Hopkins.

On January 10, Professor Ron Ballinger of MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering will speak on Restarting Decommissioned Nuclear Power Plants.

Professor Ron Ballinger will discuss how the growing demand for electricity stimulated by EVs and data mining has led, for example, to consideration by Microsoft to restart the decommissioned Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. What are the technical hurdles to doing this and how is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission responding?

Ronald G. Ballinger is a Professor Emeritus of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served for 8 years in the nuclear navy before attending college. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1975, his S.M. in Nuclear Engineering in 1977 and in Materials Science and Engineering in 1978 and his Sc.D. in Nuclear Materials Engineering in 1982 from MIT. After receiving his Sc.D., he joined the faculty at MIT. Ballinger was appointed to the U.S. Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board by President Joseph Biden on October 25, 2022. He has served on several U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) committees dealing with the stabilization, processing and disposition of metallic uranium fuel from the production reactors as well as from research reactors including teams to evaluate options for the Hanford, Savannah River, and Idaho National Engineering Laboratory sites. He has been, a member of several DOE committees to evaluate advanced reactor options and materials for these options. These committees include: (1) Independent Technical Review Group: Design Features and Technology Uncertainties for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant, (2) Power Conversion Unit Study Committee, and (3) the Idaho National Laboratory Materials Review Board. Professor Ballinger was a member of the Independent Performance Assessment Review Panel that evaluated the total system performance assessment for the license application for the Yucca Mountain waste repository. Professor Ballinger was appointed to the NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards in 2013.