Nuclear Energy Agency Appoints Francesca Giovannini and Aditi Verma to Working Groups

Two members of the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) team have been appointed to working groups at the Paris-based Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA). MTA Executive Director Dr. Francesca Giovannini and Visiting Scholar Dr. Aditi Verma join working groups in support of the NEA’s Global Forum on Nuclear Education, Science, Technology, and Policy. The Global Forum creates a framework for global cooperation and engagement between universities and policymakers from NEA member countries. 

Verma will join two working groups with the Forum. The first group will contribute to achieving gender equity in the nuclear engineering, technology, and academic workforces. She will serve alongside Co-Chairs Seungjin Kim from Purdue University and Vera Verkhoturova from Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. The group will refine activities to address the augmentation of the number of women in the nuclear field.  

Verma will also serve on a second working group that seeks to rethink the relationship between nuclear energy and society. With this group, she will serve alongside Co-Chairs Edward Obbard from the University of New South Wales and Emmanuela Colombo from Politecnico di Milano. 

"I am delighted to see the establishment of the Global Forum. The Global nuclear energy sector finds itself at an important inflection point – nuclear energy technologies have a potentially significant role to play in the low carbon energy transition,” Verma shared.  

“But, first, some of the sector’s most pressing challenges – its fraught relationship with society, its historically limited ability to innovate, and its failure to draw and retain diverse demographics – must be resolved. The Global Forum, by connecting policymakers with academics who think creatively and in a long-term way about these issues, creates a mechanism for potentially resolving some of these critical challenges,” Verma said. Verma led the establishment of the Global Forum during her tenure at the NEA, prior to her arrival at MTA. 

Giovannini will join a working group focused on future requirements for the competitiveness of nuclear energy. She will serve alongside Co-Chairs Ian Farnan from the University of Cambridge and Man-Sung Yim from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). The group will focus on the integration of conventional power generation, next-generation advanced modular (small and micro) reactors, and nuclear electricity and heat into energy markets and appropriate grid systems. 

Overall, the NEA Global Forum acts as an inclusive network of experts in the nuclear energy sector, primarily from academia, focused on enabling the generation and flow of ideas. With creative problem-solving measures, the Global Forum aims to confront some of the most significant challenges the nuclear energy sector faces today.