Name: Davide Curreli
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign
Role in MSEE URA: Lead for Research Area 3 / Focus Area 1 – Chemistry in Extreme Environments / Nuclear Fireball Plasma Chemistry

How you are planning to work (or already working) with other researchers within the URA?

Prof. Curreli has a standing collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the characterization of nuclear fireball plasmas containing uranium in reactive environments. The RA3-FA1 team aims at understanding, describing, and predicting mid-phase interactions of a nuclear fireball with its surroundings. The team has unique expertise on the experimental characterization and modeling of complex, low-temperature heterogeneous plasmas involving actinides and debris formation from energetic events.

The team uses ultrafast optical diagnostics and new techniques for high-resolution and broadband spectroscopy to characterize the evolution of a simulated nuclear fireball in laboratory, isolate and identify spectral lines of ions, atoms, and molecules in dense, congested spectra for actinides, and thereby determine time-dependence of species and temperatures. Such techniques will be utilized concurrently with the most advanced computational treatments available for the identification of spectral lines, transition states, and rate coefficients, with the aim of providing new understanding of the gas-phase formation of radioactive compounds within a nuclear fireball, nuclear debris formation, and interaction of the fallout with the soil and the environment. The Research Area 3 – Focus Area 1 team includes the following members: Davide Curreli, Nick Glumac, Debbie Levin (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign), Ed Dreizin (NJIT), Mark Phillips (University of Arizona), Harry Radousky (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and Sivanandan Harilal (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory).