Bio
Robert (Bob) Salko's research interests are primarily related to computational thermal-hydraulics for both traditional light water reactors and advanced reactor systems. This includes software development, model development, verification and validation of computer codes, modeling and simulation, code coupling, multi-scale modeling, numerical methods, high-performance computing, and quality assurance. Some specific challenge problems that Bob has studied include departure from nucleate boiling, crud-induced localized corrosion, loss-of-coolant accident progression, boiling heat transfer and void generation, turbulent mixing, and gas transport in molten salt reactors. Bob is the primary developer of the subchannel code, CTF, and has worked extensively with the light water reactor core simulator code, VERA, and the NEAMS MOOSE based advanced reactor systems code, SAM.
Awards
Recipient of the 2021 Pennsylvania State University College of Engineering "40 Under 40" award
Technology Commercialization Award in recognition for successful licensing of VERA to nuclear industry partners
2016 R&D 100 award for contributions to the development of the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications Core Simulator
Co-recipient of 2016 ORNL Significant Event Award for contributing to the computational performance improvements of Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications Core Simulator
2015 ORNL Significant Event Award for contribution to CASL milestone, "Qualify VERA-CS for Multi-Cycle (with Fuel Reloading) PWR Core Simulations Capability"
Chosen as the CASL 2014 Technical Contributor of the Year (CASL "Knight" award)