John Kennedy Email & Phone Number

Washington, DC, US

Rockville, Maryland, United States

Rockville, Maryland, United States

Program Manager for multiple space nuclear projects, including the Reactor System of a Lunar Fission Surface Power project. We are working to put the first nuclear reactor power plant on the moon by the end of the decade. Also developing cislunar nuclear power systems.

Rockville, Maryland, United States

Managing the Engineering Organization in the X-energy Government Research & Development Division.

Rockville, Maryland, United States

Currently managing a team of multidisciplinary engineers in the design and analysis of the Xe-Mobile nuclear microreactor. This includes the design and optimization of the reactor core, as well as supervision and review of the detailed CFD and system level thermal-hydraulic analyses. Currently implementing an Agile process using Gitlab to organize and.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Led the thermal-hydraulic analysis of advanced nuclear reactor designs. This work supported multiple projects, including a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion system. Recipient of the 2020 X-energy Iron of the Company award.

Idaho Falls, Idaho

Thermal-Fluids Analyst in the Experiment Analysis Division. Projects include:- Thermal/Hydraulic Analysis of nuclear experiments- Design and analysis of thermal/fluid/structural performance of new reactor concepts. Primary emphasis is on micro-reactors (aka very-Small Modular Reactors)- Support of university experiments to characterize the Fluid-Structure.

Columbia, Missouri Area

Instructor for Undergraduate Biological Engineering Fluid Mechanics (BE 3070) course.

Columbia, Missouri Area

• Built and ran a research laboratory focused on experimental and numeric analysis of nuclear thermal & fluid systems. The laboratory supports NNSA research for GTRI LEU reactor conversion & Mo-99 production programs.
• Constructed a flow loop with laser deflection sensors, pressure transducers, and flow rate control
• Designed and built an integrated data acquisition and control system with an NI cDAQ and Arduino. Both are controlled through a single LabView program.
• Designed, built, and deployed a 52 core Windows HPC cluster
• Supervised and mentored five undergraduate researchers

Columbia, Missouri Area

• Teaching assistant for an undergraduate thermal-fluids laboratory.
• Interacted with students on a weekly basis and led discussions during lab sessions
• Developed the skills necessary for communicating complex engineering concepts to undergraduate students

Bellevue, WA

Studied Dynamic Fluid-Body Interaction (DFBI) analysis for a reactor safety mechanism. Also completed CFD simulations using a multi-phase mixture model.

Bellevue, WA

• Development of coupled thermal-hydraulic simulations of nuclear fuel bundles
• Created scripts to automate the simulation setup and execution process
• Coupled thermal/displacement FEA analysis and CFD turbulent coolant flow

Greater Chicago Area

• Continued M.S. and PhD. research supporting MURR fuel conversion.
• Worked directly with engineering experts to address key issues in new MURR fuel design
• Gave multiple presentations on the current progress of FSI research in Q&A sessions

Greater Chicago Area

Hazelwood, MO

• Worked in a laboratory conducting tests on the structural integrity of medical devices.
• Worked with a team to determine the cause of structural failure in one of Covidien’s medical devices. Also, I assisted in the development of a plan to correct the issue.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Mechanical And Aerospace Engineering, 3.900/4.000

Activities and Societies: NASA Missouri Space Grant Consortium - Spring 2015 Graduate & Professional Council (GPC) Representative.

Master'S Degree, Mechanical And Aerospace Engineering, 3.889/4.000

M.S. research focused on early numeric model development and code coupling stabilization techniques for Star-CCM+/Abaqus FSI simulations..

Bachelor'S Degree, Mechanical And Aerospace Engineering

Activities and Societies: Mathematics Minor