Vittorio Badalassi

Dr Vittorio Badalassi is a Distinguished R&D Staff Member in the Thermal Hydraulics group – Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Vittorio received his PhD (2004) in chemical engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara and trained in Innovation and Entrepreneurship Business Management at the Imperial College London Executive Program. He is a Chartered Engineer with international experience and a proven record for success in R&D, industrial consulting, R&T management and startup funding/operation; he is a recognized expert in modelling and simulation (CFD) and in Nuclear Thermal Hydraulics, with further expertise in the aerospace and chemical sector; he has worked in numerous technical positions for R&D institutions (Royal Society Industry Fellow at Imperial College/Rolls-Royce), in industry (Chief Nuclear Safety Engineer at the PALLAS reactor) and startups (Founder and CTO of his company in the UK). He sourced funding (up to 4Mn$), managed multi-cultural engineering teams in both industry and academia, and had direct exposure to senior executives in corporations. Author of highly cited papers and patents, and winner of prestigious academic awards.

At ORNL he is developing, demonstrating, and qualifying predictive simulation software for nuclear thermal hydraulics and safety applications through leveraging high-fidelity computational fluid dynamics (CFD), reduced-order thermal-hydraulic models, and advanced data analytics; further, he is leading and setting up the strategy and the investments on computational fluid dynamics for the whole laboratory.