Dr. Burak
is an Assistant Research Scientist in the department of Nuclear Engineering and
Radiological Sciences (NERS) at the University of Michigan (UM). Dr. Burak
earned a PhD from the University of Utah in 2019 studying uranium oxide
reduction in molten lithium chloride-lithium oxide salt. His main research
interests are electrochemistry, especially in molten salts, high-temperature
advanced reactor systems, and reactor thermal hydraulics. Since completing his
PhD, Dr. Burak has been working with Dr. Xiaodong Sun’s group in the Thermal
Hydraulics Laboratory at the University of Michigan on research related to
advanced nuclear reactors, including molten salt reactors and high-temperature
gas-cooled reactors. He has developed several experimental systems for
molten salts, including a durable reference electrode concept compatible with
irradiated molten salt systems. He has also developed experimental cells for
gas-cooled fast reactor technology and has over a decade of experience
troubleshooting electronics/mechanical systems. Dr. Burak will also have access
to the other resources available in the Thermal Hydraulics Laboratory,
including over 2500 sq. ft. lab space with 1.0 MW dedicated electrical power supply, and multiphase computational fluid dynamics tools and expertise. In addition, UM-THL has
access to UM’s Linux-based high-performance computing cluster (FLUX) and
College of Engineering's federated installation of faculty-owned
high-performance computing resources (NYX), with over 5000 cores each. In
addition, the lab has access to several CFD codes, such as NEK5000, ANSYS, and
STAR-CCM+, FEM codes such as COMSOL Multiphysics and MOOSE Framework, and
nuclear reactor system level codes such as RELAP5, SAM, and TRACE.
