Professor Anne White, head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE), has announced the appointment of Professor Benoit Forget as associate department head.
The MIT Computational Reactor Physics Group — which Forget leads with Professor Kord Smith — focuses on developing new ways of streamlining the complex software needed to simulate the vast numbers of random interactions that take place inside a nuclear reactor core, in order to better understand how to develop new generations of improved reactor architectures.
Forget earned a BS in chemical engineering and an MS in energy engineering at the École Polytechnique de Montréal. He completed his PhD in nuclear engineering at Georgia Tech in 2006, after which he spent a year and a half working at Idaho National Laboratory before accepting an appointment at MIT.
As associate head, Professor Forget will focus on expanding computational science and engineering activities within NSE, including leading NSE engagement with the new MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing. He currently serves as co-chair of the Working Group on College Infrastructure for the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, which is charged with examining how to ensure that departments, labs, and centers have the information and resources they require to meet their computational needs, such as accessing and storing data.
Forget replaces Professor Jacopo Buongiorno, who served as associate department head and led academic organization and oversight in NSE from 2015 through June 2019.
