Paul Wilson (nuclear engineer)


Paul Philip Hood Wilson is the Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering in Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a prominent nuclear energy communicator, and advocate of modern computational science practices. He is well known for leading the production of the computational nuclear engineering toolkits ALARA, Cyclus, and DAGMC. He is also the founding president of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear and is the Faculty Director of the Advanced Computing Initiative at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Education

Wilson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was raised in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada. He obtained a Bachelor of Applied Science in engineering science in the Nuclear Power option of the Engineering Science program at the University of Toronto. He then obtained a Doktoringenieur degree in mechanical engineering from the Institute for Neutron Physics and Reactor Engineering of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He subsequently earned a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1999. There, Wilson became an assistant professor in August 2001, associate professor in July 2008, and full professor in January 2013.
At the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Wilson serves on the Executive Committee of the Wisconsin Energy Institute, the Steering Committee of the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies, and as Faculty Director of the Advanced Computing Initiative. He also served as Chair of the Energy Analysis & Policy Program.

Honors

Wilson has contributed an array of computational advances to nuclear engineering: