Bio

Austen Ocanas earned his Master of Science in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University in December 2025. He conducted his thesis research with NSSPI under Dr. Farheen Naqvi, collaborating with Sandia National Laboratories to investigate methods for measuring nuclear material in spent pebble bed reactor fuel.

Ocanas’s research addressed a safeguards challenge for advanced reactors: determining how much fissile material remains in used fuel pebbles without destroying them. Using reactor physics and fuel burnup simulations, he investigated a technique that relies on neutrons naturally produced within spent fuel to induce fissions, then relates the resulting delayed gamma-ray emissions to the mass of key fissile isotopes. His findings indicated that the approach could be suitable for measuring bulk quantities of fuel pebbles with detectors arranged around them, supporting nuclear material accounting for emerging reactor technologies.

Ocanas also earned his bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M in 2023. After completing his graduate studies, he joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as a nuclear criticality safety analyst.