Doctor of Philosophy, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

University of Notre Dame / Notre Dame, IN, USA

January 2025

Bachelor of Science, Nuclear Engineering

Thomas Edison State University / Trenton, NJ, USA

December 2017

Associate of Science, Nuclear Engineering

Three Rivers Community College / Norwich, CT, USA

May 2015

Metropolis Postdoctoral Fellow

Los Alamos National Laboratory / Los Alamos, NM, USA

February 2025 - Current

• Use machine learning to optimize energy grid group structures for nuclear data.
• Apply reinforcement learning techniques to minimize errors in nuclear data and numerical simulations.
• Investigating practical uses of natural language processing and large language models as it applies to nucleardata and nuclear simulations.

Graduate Student Researcher

University of Notre Dame / Notre Dame, IN, USA

September 2018 - January 2025

• Dissertation: Hybrid Numerical Methods and Solution Verification for the Neutron Transport Equation. DOI: 10.7274/27927858
• Designed and developed machine learning and AI pipeline for data reduction in numerical simulations while remaining within a prescribed tolerance.
• Performed solution verification for model risk evaluation of high-dimensional numerical simulations.

Graduate Student Assistant

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory / Livermore, CA, USA

June 2021 - August 2021

• Integrated parallel C++ production-level high-dimensional physics codes on Lawrence Livermore’s HPCs.
• Communicated with multiple developer teams to ensure that the needs from both code base developers andthe users of these code bases were met.

Graduate Student Assistant

Los Alamos National Laboratory / Los Alamos, NM, USA

May 2019 - July 2019

• Worked in a collaborative environment to quantify experimental errors in nuclear data using novel machinelearning and artificial intelligence.
• Utilized machine learning techniques to analyze and identify outliers in nuclear cross-sectional data.

Boilers and Turbines Operator

NRG Energy Power Station / Middletown, CT, USA

June 2015 - June 2018

• Responsible for safe and efficient operation, testing, inspection, and preventative maintenance ofcondensate, feed water, hydrogen, nitrogen, and fuel oil systems.
• Make decisions within prescribed operating procedures and guidelines. Effectively communicateinformation to supervision and other plant personnel.

Single Grid Error Estimation for Neutron Transport Solvers.

Ben Whewell and Ryan G. McClarren, (2025). Journal of Verification, Validation and Uncertainty Quantification. 10(2): 021001. DOI: 10.1115/1.4069426

Collision-Based Hybrid Method for Two-Dimensional Neutron Transport Problems.

Ben Whewell and Ryan G. McClarren, (2025). Nuclear Science and Engineering, 1-23. DOI: 10.1080/00295639.2025.2489778

Multigroup Neutron Transport Using a Collision-Based Hybrid Method.

Ben Whewell, Ryan G. McClarren, Cory D. Hauck, and Minwoo Shin, (2023). Nuclear Science and Engineering, 197:7, 1386-1405. DOI: 10.1080/00295639.2022.2154119

A low-rank power iteration scheme for neutron transport criticality problems.

Jonas Kusch, Benjamin Whewell, Ryan G. McClarren, and Martin Frank, (2022). Journal of Computational Physics, 470, 111587. DOI: 10.1016/j.jcp.2022.111587

Data Reduction in Deterministic Neutron Transport Calculations Using Machine Learning.

Ben Whewell and Ryan G. McClarren, (2022). Annals of Nuclear Energy, 176, p. 109276. DOI: 10.1016/j.anucene.2022.109276

Evaluating 239Pu(n,f) cross sections via machine learning using experimental data, covariances, and measurement features.

B. Whewell, M. Grosskopf, and D. Neudecker, (2020). Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors, and Associated Equipment, 978, p. 164305. DOI: 10.1016/j.nima.2020.164305