UCOR donates $50,000 for UT faculty fellowship

 

UCOR, the federal government’s cleanup contractor in Oak Ridge, presented the University of Tennessee with a $50,000 check this week for a faculty fellowship in the university’s College of Engineering.

This check was the latest installment of a $250,000 commitment UCOR, a partnership between URS and CH2M Hill, has made to the university, a press release said.

“As a cleanup contractor of a nuclear site, UCOR is committed to ensuring continued excellence in nuclear education,” said Matt Marston, UCOR chief operating officer. “This fellowship is an important step to fulfilling that commitment.”

The recipient of the fellowship, Jason Hayward, is an assistant fellow in the College of Engineering’s Department of Nuclear Engineering. Since arriving at the University of Tennessee in 2008, Hayward has focused on research in the areas of detector science and development of gamma ray and neutron imaging for applications in nuclear security, neutron scattering science, and medical imaging, the press release said.

Most recently, Hayward has been working on medical neutron imaging technology to produce high resolution pictures of the inside of the human body. This work can help revolutionize the way doctors treat and remove cancer.

“We are proud to continue to sponsor Dr. Hayward’s important work in nuclear science,” said Ken Rueter, UCOR president and project manager. “Nuclear engineering is a broad field that can provide many beneficial advances to the nuclear cleanup efforts at the Oak Ridge Reservation and in the entire DOE complex.”

UCOR is responsible for cleaning up the East Tennessee Technology Park (formerly the Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant) as well as other site on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Reservation.