Welcome to Dr. Syed Bahauddin Alam‘s MARTIANS (Machine Learning and ARTIficial Intelligence for Advancing Nuclear Systems) Laboratory.

Principal Investigator’s Bio:

Dr. Syed Bahauddin Alam (Not “Syed Alam”) is an Assistant Professor of the Nuclear, Plasma & Radiological Engineering Department at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). 

• He has been appointed as one of 11 National Committee Members on Foundation Models for Scientific Discovery and Innovation: Opportunities Across the Department of Energy at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM).  
• He was named a National AI leader and expert in UIUC’s official institutional response to the White House Request for Information on the U.S. National Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan (2025). 
• He received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2026) for his project, Energy-Efficient and Compact Foundation Model for Universal Virtual Sensing in Dynamic Energy Systems.
• He received the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Distinguished Early Career Award (2025)
• He has been named to the American Nuclear Society’s Nuclear News “40 Under 40” List (2025), which “shines a spotlight on the exceptional young professionals driving the nuclear sector forward as the nuclear community faces a dramatic generational shift.”
• He was selected for the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) 2026 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering, joining a cohort of 74 highly accomplished early-career engineers from academia, industry, and government.
• He received the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Ted Quinn Early Career Award (2026)
• He received the 2025 HPCwire Editors’ Choice Award in Energy (for the first time for Grainger UIUC), which recognizes the most significant breakthroughs and the best and brightest minds in supercomputing/HPC.
• Dr. Alam was featured as an expert voice in MIT Technology Review (2026) in its coverage of advanced nuclear reactors and nuclear waste
• He has also been selected/invited as one of ~100 Selected Leaders by the Simons Foundation (Flatiron Institute) to bring leaders and enablers of Foundation Models (FM) for Science together from across the globe. 
• For his contribution to AI and Digital Twins research for Nuclear Power Systems, Dr. Alam received the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research from the UIUC Grainger College of Engineering in 2025. 
• For his research on AI and digital twins, he was a finalist for the Illinois Innovation Award 2024 for excellence in cutting-edge innovation or translational research that addresses real-world problems and has the potential to make a significant impact. 
• Dr. Alam has been featured in Bloomberg News, one of the world’s most influential and widely respected sources for business, energy, and technology reporting, to provide expert commentary on “AI+Nuclear Energy” and “Nuclear-Powered Data Center.” 
• His work has also been featured in Illinois Alumni Magazine, which serves as a repository of inspiring stories that capture the spirit of Illinois. 
• His Nature Portfolio-published research on AI-powered digital twins for nuclear systems attracted extensive national and international media coverage featured by over twenty global major news outlets, including American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS/Science Magazine/EurekAlert), Microsoft Network, Ground News, Nuclear Engineering International, Quantum Zeitgeist, LeBigData (France), EYE Magazine,  Interesting Engineering, Innovant.fr (France), Scienze Notizie (Italy), Enerzine.com (France) and so on. The research also ranked in the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Nature Altmetric globally.

Principal Investigator’s Experiences:

• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Current Appointment)
  • Assistant Professor of Nuclear, Plasma & Radiological Engineering
  • Projects  –  Leading MARTIANS (Machine Learning and ARTificial Intelligence for Advancing Nuclear Systems) Lab. Please see the Research Highlights
• Missouri University of Science and Technology (Current Appointment)
  • Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science
  • Projects  –  Leading MARTIANS (Machine Learning and ARTificial Intelligence for Advancing Nuclear Systems) Lab. Please see the Research Highlights.

• French Atomic Energy Commission (Feb 2018 to Jan 2019)
  • Postdoc
  • Project  –  Gamma Heating for Fast Reactor

• Rhode Island Atomic Energy Commission  (Apr  2016 – Present)
  • Visiting Scholar
  • Project  –  Oxidation Behavior and Radiation Effects of Silicon Carbide 

• University of Cambridge (Jan 2014 to Jan 2018)
  • Graduate Research Student, Department of Engineering
  • Project  –   Reactor Core Design for Marine Propulsion

• Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Jul 2017 to Aug 2017)
  • Nonproliferation Fellow, KAIST Nonproliferation Education & Research Center

• Argonne National Laboratory (Jun 2018)
  • Modeling, Experimentation and Validation (MEV) Fellow, Lemont, IL, USA
  • Project  –   Artificial Intelligence for Robust Reactor System Design

• University of Cambridge (Oct 2012 to Sep 2013)
  • Graduate Master’s Research Student, Cambridge Nuclear Energy Centre
  • Project  –  Modeling of the Reduced-Moderation Water Reactor Fuel Assembly 

Wanna learn more about him? Please continue browsing then 🙂

MARTIANS Lab