Building technological tools for nuclear disarmament | MIT News

Mentorship has performed a central job in the twists and turns of Associate Professor Areg Danagoulian’s lifetime.

As a boy, it led him very first to mathematics, where by a passionate teacher and mentorship from his mom and dad instilled in him a appreciate for the issue. He then followed in the footsteps of his physicist parents and turned a physicist himself. Through his occupation, mentorship has aided Danagoulian observe his research pursuits, from primary to utilized nuclear physics and then to industry. A lot more just lately, Danagoulian returned to his alma mater, MIT, the place he delights in guiding the students in his lab as they turn out to be mature scientists.

Becoming a member of the Institute’s school in 2014 was the newest phase transform in a vocation entire of shifting investigation interests. In that time Danagoulian, who was awarded tenure last year, has created new systems for detecting nuclear warhead products, encrypting their technical facts, and verifying their dismantlement.

On the edge of a breakthrough

Danagoulian could not believe that his eyes. It was the starting of 2020, and his lab had just concluded jogging preliminary experiments with collaborators at Princeton University on a new, transportable method for detecting fissionable material that could be utilised in nuclear warheads. The plan had been to gather baseline facts and to improve problems from there. But as he seemed at the early results, he recognized a smaller but unmistakable blip precisely the place just one would be if the process were presently operating.

“The dip was barely noticeable, but I understood it was not just my eyes,” Danagoulian suggests. “We experienced this suboptimal set up and we presently had a weak — but genuine — sign. That seriously determined us. We bought tremendous excited.”

If the process could perform with significant plenty of accuracy, it could renovate nuclear disarmament treaties amongst superpowers. In the previous, this kind of treaties have qualified the supply devices (e.g. missiles and bomber plane) of the nuclear weapons relatively than the weapons themselves, in component for the reason that the technology for verifying nuclear products was not compact or sensitive sufficient to be employed at nuclear websites. Danagoulian and his collaborators believed they have been on the precipice of establishing a technological know-how that could transform that.

Then the Covid-19 pandemic began. Danagoulian’s lab was briefly closed, as was the lab at Princeton.

“We’re searching at this plot, and we’re considering there is a gold mine waiting for us,” Danagoulian says.

Soon after months of examining details and scheduling even further experiments, Danagoulian’s lab reopened in June of previous yr with safety safeguards in spot.

“We were being itching for action. The minute the doors opened, we ran into the lab,” Danagoulian remembers. “We begun collecting information — and this time it was definitely superior-good quality data due to optimized experimental ailments — and suddenly all these peaks started out showing up exactly exactly where they have been meant to. It was this really worthwhile factor, this sense of triumph, to do a thing that experienced never ever been performed ahead of on such a little scale.”

Given that then, Danagoulian has been performing with nationwide labs as well as users of the coverage neighborhood to raise recognition of the technology and study a lot more about how it could be implemented.

Danagoulian suggests becoming at MIT has further more exposed him to the area of public policy, aiding him make impactful technical options and primary to collaborations. He has also designed a related tool for hiding the structure details of nuclear warheads through the verification approach. That procedure makes use of a physics-based mostly analog to prevalent electronic encryption procedures to scramble knowledge about the weapon’s style. The method addresses an additional significant hurdle to nuclear dismantlement by permitting the worldwide group to inspect a country’s nuclear websites without having jeopardizing military secrets and techniques.

“Verification of nuclear disarmament is extremely important, since a treaty without having verification is even worse than no treaty at all,” Danagoulian claims, citing the In depth Examination Ban Treaty that was proposed in the 1950s but not entirely adopted until 1996, in section since experts lacked the technological know-how to reliably differentiate underground tests from seismic gatherings.

Supporting other folks

Amid the multidisciplinary society of MIT, Danagoulian made the decision to merge his scientific get the job done with politics. But for his moms and dads, who have been the two physicists under the Soviet Union (in modern-day Armenia), science and social troubles were inseparable.

“In Soviet Armenia, staying in a scientist loved ones created you a cultural minority, and it would inevitably develop into element of your identification,” Danagoulian claims. “Here it is a job, not a social class. But we observed ourselves as a cultural group or a political course. Afterwards, the independence motion in Armenia was mostly led by intellectuals and experts.”

Danagoulian’s loved ones moved to the United States when he was 16. His mom and dad experienced challenging lives as physicists, and even though they fostered his enjoy for the sciences, they also inspired their son to be a personal computer scientist, which they thought would convey far more prosperity and work safety. But Danagoulian experienced discovered a enjoy for physics when preparing for college, and he determined to disregard their pleas. He went on to significant in physics at MIT, the place he acquired the chance to perform with Professor Richard Milner in the Laboratory of Nuclear Science as aspect of the Undergraduate Study Prospects System (UROP).

Danagoulian finished his PhD perform in nuclear physics at the College of Illinois and turned a researcher at the Los Alamos Countrywide Laboratory.  There, he became progressively intrigued in applied science and made a decision to sign up for a Boston-dependent enterprise establishing a cargo scanner for detecting nuclear materials at ports and border crossings all-around the earth.

At adequately high energies, photons can move by means of even dense buildings like metal delivery containers. When working in business, Danagoulian was seeking to create a technique that would send a beam of photons into containers and scan for the subatomic particles that end result from collisions with nuclear products.

Danagoulian and collaborators developed and commercialized the procedure, which was deployed in the South Boston Container Terminal for two several years in advance of getting deserted during the Covid-19 pandemic, mostly because of its substantial price tag. Danagoulian thinks it was the initial this kind of process deployed in the entire world and considers it a major technological achievements. He believes it could be deployed immediately yet again if required in a crisis involving nuclear terrorism.

In 2014, Danagoulian returned to MIT to be part of the college of the Office of Nuclear Science and Engineering.

“This division is very collaborative,” Danagoulian suggests. “Everyone is trying to assist you any way they can. It is a pretty supportive section, and I believe my good results is quite a great deal connected with the mentorship and suggestions I’ve gotten.”

Danagoulian has also embraced his job educating and advising learners, whilst he admits he experienced to understand to allow learners tackle the investigate and experiments them selves.

“When I lastly bought the self-discipline to let go, it was really satisfying, because I started out viewing my pupils get greater, and I began seeing their operate getting to be improved than my personal work in that particular spot. That was deeply gratifying,” Danagoulian says.

These times, Danagoulian is content to be in a place to offer the help and direction that’s performed such a central function in his lifetime.

“Most of my choices in life, when it arrives to education, research, function, have been closely affected by mentorship,” he says. “Mentorship is critically significant for shaping you, serving to you decide a course, and encouraging you. I check out to assist learners recognize they are capable of carrying out terrific matters.”