Prashant K. Jain

Dr. Prashant Jain is a Distinguished R&D staff and a Line and Program leader in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s nuclear energy enterprise, serving as Section Head for the Advanced Reactor Engineering & Development (ARED) Section within the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division. Under his leadership, the section advances mission-critical capabilities to improve the safety, security, performance, construction, operation, maintenance, and integration of nuclear energy systems. The section’s work supports advanced reactor de-risking through innovative design, modeling, simulation, and prototype demonstrations; strengthens risk-informed decision-making, compliance, and capacity building; and expands digital-twin capabilities for fission, fusion, and broader energy systems through instrumentation and controls, data integration, and predictive models. 

With more than two decades of experience, Dr. Jain combines deep technical expertise with demonstrated leadership in building programs, developing teams, and engaging national sponsors. His technical contributions span computational fluid dynamics, multiphysics modeling, nuclear thermal design and safety analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning for digital twins, safety-security-safeguards (3S) integration, and parallel scientific software development.

Dr. Jain also serves as National Pillar Lead for Engineering and Technology Solutions within the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)’s Office of International Nuclear Security (INS) portfolio. In this role, he helps coordinate a multi-laboratory research portfolio of approximately $10 million involving ORNL, Sandia National Laboratories, Idaho National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, Savannah River National Laboratory, and other partners. 

Dr. Jain is an Executive Member of the American Nuclear Society’s Operations and Power Division and serves on the Program Committee of the ANS Thermal Hydraulics Division. He also serves on the advisory boards of North Carolina State University’s Center for Nuclear Energy Facilities and Structures and the University of Michigan’s Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences. He is also a national technical reviewer for the DOE Office of Nuclear Energy’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear Engineering (GAIN) Program. 

He has held editorial leadership roles for leading nuclear and energy research publications, including guest editor for a Nuclear Engineering and Design special issue on outcomes from Researchers Orienting the Future of Nuclear Fission Technology, associate editor for a Frontiers in Energy Research special issue on digital twins for nuclear assets, and associate editor for an Applied Sciences special issue on CFD analysis for nuclear engineering. Dr. Jain received the American Nuclear Society Mark Mills Award for his doctoral research on lattice Boltzmann methods and UT-Battelle’s 2019 Mission Support Award for his contributions to the HFIR event causal analysis.