Lab Director
About
Dr. Lorenzo Vergari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC). Dr. Vergari is the director of the Advanced Blankets and Coolants Laboratory, a research group with the mission of developing the new generation of coolants for fission reactors and liquid breeding blankets for fusion reactors. Dr. Vergari is an expert on molten salts and their chemical interactions with reactor materials and has led or contributed to research efforts focused on solute behavior, salt electrochemistry, graphite-salt interactions, and hydrogen-graphite-salt chemistry.
Education
2023 | Ph.D. Nuclear Engineering | University of California, Berkeley
2023 | Graduate Certificate in Applied Data Science | University of California, Berkeley
2023 | Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Ed. | University of California, Berkeley
2019 | M.S. Nuclear and Energy Engineering | Politecnico di Torino
2018 | M.S. Nuclear Engineering | Politecnico di Milano
2016 | B.S. Energy Engineering | Politecnico di Milano
Selected Awards
2025 | Distinguished Early Career Award| Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy
2024, 2025 | List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent by Their Students | University of Illinois
2023 | Future Leaders Society Induction | American Association of Colleges and Universities
2022 | Graduate Scholarship | American Nuclear Society
2021 | James F. Schumar Scholarship | American Nuclear Society
2020 | Young Researcher Award | Asia-Pacific Symposium on Tritium
2019 | Berkeley Graduate Fellow | University of California, Berkeley