Alli Mae (Bulkley ’20) Berry joined the team in ACU’s NEXT Lab as a research scientist just a month after graduating and five days before getting married. Despite the blur of life changes in such a short period of time, Berry jumped right into her work by learning the ins and outs of NEXT Lab’s … Continued
Abilene Christian University’s Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Laboratory, or NEXT Lab, has taken another step toward the reality of a molten salt research reactor with the approval of its first patent. The U.S. Patent and Trademark office awarded ACU the patent for a high-temperature flow meter Aug. 5, 2020, after a three-year process of … Continued
Abilene Christian University and Abilene-based Natura Resources LLC are partnering in a $30.5 million effort to design and license a research reactor in collaboration with three other major universities. Natura will provide $21.5 million to ACU over the next three years, the largest sponsored research agreement in the university’s history. ACU’s Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing … Continued
The NEXT Lab at Abilene Christian University has received a $120,000 budget renewal of the teams’ sponsored research award through Idaho National Laboratory, titled “Investigation of Instrumentation, Data Analytics, and Simulation Synergies for the Versatile Test Reactor.” This grant was initially awarded in August 2018 for $150,000 and represented the NEXT Lab’s first federal support. NEXT stands for Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing. … Continued
Tom Bailey’s (’71) career as a professional mechanical engineer didn’t end when he retired in 2013 from Weatherford International, a Houston-based oilfield service company. But it did change directions. In Houston, Bailey was director of a large engineering department. Today, he is a senior mechanical engineer in ACU’s NEXT Lab, working with faculty and mentoring … Continued
In the fall of 2017, Dr. Kim Pamplin (’91) added another hat to the stack he already was wearing – that of senior chemist with ACU’s Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing Laboratory or NEXT Lab, as it’s best known. Pamplin is a professor and former chair of chemistry and biochemistry, specializing in analytical chemistry. But the … Continued
When Rosario Gibbs gave a presentation recently to a consortium of universities working with ACU’s NEXT Lab to develop a molten salt nuclear reactor, her first slide was of head coach Joe Golding and his NCAA Division I Southland Conference championship basketball team. Golding’s motto throughout the season, “trust the process,” is just as applicable … Continued
In May 2019, Diego Zometa Paniagua was preparing to graduate from Abilene Christian University with a degree in chemistry. Today, just a few months later, he is working in the same building where he took chemistry classes and using the same labs, but with a different goal. He is working on a project with the … Continued