Urbana Campus Research Calendar (OVCRI)

Interpretable Data-Driven Modeling for Nuclear Reactors and Integrated Energy Systems

Abstract: Accurate prediction of transport phenomena such as temperature, concentration, and momentum is fundamental to the analysis and design of nuclear and energy systems. While continuum models based on the Navier–Stokes and advection–diffusion equations capture rich physics, their infinite-dimensional nature limits direct applicability in engineering design, uncertainty quantification, and real-time analysis. Reduced-order descriptions are therefore widely used, often introducing empiricism and unnecessary conservatism.

This seminar presents an interpretable machine-learning framework for developing physics-informed, low-complexity reduced-order models using statistical learning and nonlinear system identification. By exploiting the Markovian and non-Markovian structure of thermal-fluid systems across time scales, coarse-grained dynamical models are learned directly from high-fidelity and quasi-experimental data. Demonstrated on natural circulation dynamics, data-driven models trained on sparsely sensed, noisy measurements outperform purely analytical reduced models while identifying minimum sensor requirements for experimental systems.

The seminar also introduces graph-Laplacian–based learning to encode geometric and topological structure in high-dimensional thermal-hydraulic data, enabling physically consistent feature extraction, improved stability, and interpretable digital-twin modeling for advanced nuclear reactors and integrated energy systems.

Bio: Dr. Hitesh Bindra is an Associate Professor of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University. He received MS and PhD degrees from University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign. He is the director of the Nuclear Energy Systems Transport (NuEST) laboratory, where he has led multiple projects involving thermal-fluid sciences with applications in advanced nuclear reactors and heat storage systems. Dr. Bindra has also invented and developed low cost energy storage technologies which have been licensed and commercialized. He has several years of industrial experience as a reactor engineer and thermal systems engineer in Nuclear Power and Solar Power industry. Dr. Bindra is currently Chair-Elect/Vice-Chair of Operations and Power Division of American Nuclear Society and past-president of Alpha Nu Sigma National Honor Society. He is a recipient of NSF FIRST award, Big-12 Faculty fellow award, Steve Hsu Faculty Research scholar award, and Leeds Institute of Fluid Dynamics 2025 visiting fellow award. He has published more than 130 Journal articles, book chapters and peer-reviewed conference proceedings.