CDAC Science at the 2025 SSAP Symposium

CDAC Students at the 2025 SSAP Symposium. Front Row : Audrey Berlin, Masashi Kimura, CDAC Director Russell Hemley, Zach Whipple, Tirzah Abbott. Back Row : Roma Ripani, Farid Fattahpour, Clayton Halbert, Charlie Zoller, Husam Farraj, Abdul Haseeb, Jacob Minnette, Sumner Gubisch, Devi Biswajeet.

The 2025 Stewardship Science Academic Programs (SSAP) Symposium was held at the Chicago Marriott O’Hare Hotel from June 10-11.  The SSAP includes the Stewardship Science Academic Alliances (SSAA) and High Energy Density Laboratory Plasmas (HEDLP) programs within NNSA, and the Symposium brings together graduate students and faculty funded by these programs, along with NNSA laboratory staff to share results of mutual interest and foster collaborations.  Faculty supported by SSAP grants and Center awards provided overviews of their work in oral presentations, while graduate students presented their work in a poster session, which covered the areas of Low Energy Nuclear Science, Materials, and HEDLP.

The keynote speaker for this year’s symposium was Kim Budil, Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Dr. Budil discussed the ongoing need for new ideas and innovation and presented an optimistic view of opportunities for both fundamental and applied science across the NNSA laboratories.  Graduate students also had numerous opportunities to hear from NNSA laboratory staff in both formal and informal settings.

CDAC was once again well represented at the SSAP Symposium this year, with 13 graduate students from across the Center presenting posters detailing current progress in all three Scientific Thrusts :  Thermomechanical Extremes, Chemical and Material Extremes, and Coupled Extremes.  Sumner Gubisch, a graduate student from the group of CDAC Academic Partner Saniya LeBlanc at George Washington University, won a Best Poster Award for his presentation on the additive manufacturing of thermoelectric materials.

The students representing CDAC, along with their poster titles, are listed below.  The agenda for the meeting is available at the symposium website.

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Tirzah Abbott
Northwestern University
Probing High-Pressure Mineral Phases in Shocked Chondritic Meteorites with Advanced Electron Microscopy

Audrey Berlin
University of Utah
High Pressure Strength and Deformation of Irradiated, Nanocrystalline Tungsten Carbide

Devi Dutta Biswajeet
University of Illinois Chicago
Leveraging Large Language Models to Address Data Scarcity in Machine Learning: Applications in Graphene Synthesis

Husam Farraj
University of Illinois Chicago
Lead Titanate Decomposition at High Pressure and High Temperature

Farid Fattahpour
University of Illinois Chicago
First-Principles Modeling of Lattice Anharmonicity in High-Temperature Diffusion

Sumner Gubisch
George Washington University
Manipulating the Seebeck Coefficient by Engineering Point Defects through Laser Processing

Clayton Halbert
University of Illinois Chicago
High-Pressure Studies of the High Entropy Telluride: Ge1/3In1/3Sn1/3Sb2Te4

Abdul Haseeb
University of Illinois Chicago
Tuning Superconductivity and Structure in Lanthanum- Based Ternary Superhydrides

Masashi Kimura
University at Buffalo
Effects of Anharmonicity on Superconducting Y-Ca-H Systems

Jacob Minnette
University of Tennessee
Coupled Extremes in Nuclear Materials

Roma Ripani
University of Illinois Chicago
Compression of Hydrazine to Above 200 GPa

Zack Whipple
University of Illinois Chicago
High Pressure Studies of Aluminum-Nitrogen Energetic Materials

Charlie Zoller
University of Illinois Chicago
Pressure-induced Chemistry and Physics of D2-CO2 Mixtures

CDAC Students at the 2025 SSAP Symposium. Front Row : Audrey Berlin, Masashi Kimura, CDAC Director Russell Hemley, Zach Whipple, Tirzah Abbott. Back Row : Roma Ripani, Farid Fattahpour, Clayton Halbert, Charlie Zoller, Husam Farraj, Abdul Haseeb, Jacob Minnette, Sumner Gubisch, Devi Biswajeet.