CONNECT | College of Sciences | UTSA | University of Texas at San Antonio

The CONsortium on Nuclear sECurity Technologies (CONNECT) is funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration Minority Serving Institution Partnership Program (NNSA MSIPP). This program is designed to build a pipeline between the Department of Energy's sites and labs and minority-serving institutions in STEM disciplines and bring a heightened awareness of NNSA plants and laboratories to institutions with a common interest in STEM research fields.

Students studying physics, computer science, electrical engineering, and mechanical engineering, among other disciplines, will work together on interdisciplinary research and network with experts in the nuclear security field.

Vision

Through the synergy and leveraging of resources and expertise at three minority serving institutions and two world class national laboratories, we will educate scientists and engineers in the underlying science of nuclear security and nonproliferation; to be the pre-eminent center of research innovation that advances technology solutions in nuclear security in the following three areas:

Fuel cycle materials
Nuclear forensics signatures and advanced characterization
Enabling computational and data analytic techniques

Goal

The overarching goal of CONNECT is to educate and train the best next generation professionals with strong backgrounds in nuclear science, fissionable fuels fabrication and processing, nuclear materials characterization, nuclear forensic signatures, nuclear technology, and data and visual analytics, each collaboratively brought to bear on expanding the innovation envelope of nuclear security.

The consortium will conduct basic and applied research that exploits experimental and computational technologies to address grand challenges in nuclear science and engineering pertained to nuclear security.