Before joining Purdue, she worked as a research scientist at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), where she focused on advanced fuel fabrication, characterization, development, and examination. She was the inaugural Glenn T. Seaborg Distinguished Postdoctoral Associate at INL. Before joining INL, she was a postdoctoral associate at Virginia Tech. Her current research interests include corrosion in extreme environments, advanced nuclear fuel, sensor and sensor materials, advanced sintering technology, and geological repositories of radioactive waste.   

“I will be developing a research group at Purdue, capable of testing and analyzing the corrosion (including irradiation-assisted corrosion) of materials exposed to the light water reactor, molten salt reactor, sodium-cooled reactor, lead/lead-bismuth eutectic reactor, and used nuclear fuel dry storage environments using techniques including static and dynamic corrosion testing, electrochemical corrosion testing, and microstructural characterization techniques. I’m also developing a big data-based corrosion modeling to estimate the corrosion rate of materials, in the short-term and long-term, in nuclear systems. I’m collaborating with national laboratories and industries to develop the advanced sintering technology and fabricate sensor crystals, structural materials, nuclear fuels, fuel cells and batteries.” – Yi Xie