![Prairie View Students and Faculty](/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/pvamu-dc-1351.jpg)
On April 19th, students and faculty from Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU) participated in a field detection exercise at the Texas A&M Engineering Extension Service Disaster City facility. The visit was supported by the Nuclear Forensics for Minority Serving Institutions (NF-MSI) program sponsored by the US Department of Homeland Security’s Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO) and organized by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station’s Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute (NSSPI). NSSPI Deputy Director and nuclear engineering assistant professor Dr. Craig Marianno and NSSPI research engineer Claudio Gariazzo coordinated the event.
![Prairie View Students and Faculty](/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/pvamu-dc-650-1297_500x449.jpg)
NSSPI Ph.D. student J.T. Falkner led the field detection exercise, which involved using different radiation detectors to locate and characterize a simulated contamination event. The PVAMU students were asked to work together in teams and to share information between groups as though they were working in a real-life response event.
In May, a small number of the PVAMU faculty and students who participated in this exercise will be joining nuclear engineering students from Texas A&M University for a Nuclear Facilities Experience to visit nuclear facilities in New Mexico and Texas, including the URENCO uranium enrichment plant, Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Waste Control Specialists.