Announcement of the winners of the 2025 Pitch your Gen IV Research Competition
Pitch Your Generation IV Research Competition 2025 - Winners Announced
The Generation IV International Forum’s Education and Training Working Group (ETWG) is pleased to share the results of the 2025 Pitch Your Generation IV Research Competition.
Following the jury’s review of the finalist videos and the public vote, the jury awarded:
- First place to Dr Hannah Patenaude (Los Alamos National Laboratory, United States) for “Novel Diamond Sensor to Investigate High‑Valence Actinides in Molten Salts” and
- Second place to Mr Paul Baret (CEA, France) for “Austenitic steels, a new golden age for ODS steels?”
- The popular vote winner is Mr Dorian Da Cunha (CEA, France) for “Decay heat calculation validation based on revisited local thermal measurements.”
This third edition drew 49 executive‑summary submissions from 11 countries and led to 28 shortlisted videos for the jury assessment and public vote. The projects covered a broad range of Generation IV topics, including molten‑salt systems research and monitoring, sodium and lead fast reactor thermal‑hydraulics and materials, high‑temperature gas‑cooled reactor fuel and structural behaviour, as well as cross‑cutting topics such as safeguards modelling, human‑reliability data collection and machine‑learning approaches to complex two‑phase flows.
We extend our sincere thanks to all participants for the time, skill and creativity invested in their abstracts and video pitches. The quality and diversity of the submissions reflect the dynamism of the next generation of scientists and engineers contributing to the development and deployment of Generation IV systems. We wish each participant continued success in their ongoing work and future research endeavours.
Looking ahead, the three winners will be invited to present their research in ETWG webinar formats. In addition, and consistent with the arrangements discussed during the jury deliberations, the first and second place laureates will be invited as guests to a GIF event to engage with the GIF community and leadership.
We would also like to warmly thank the Competition's Jury members for this year's edition:
Roger Garbil (Euratom, European Union)
Mariano Tarantino (ENEA, Italy)
Kenichi Matsuba (Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Japan)
Hyeon‑Jin Kim (Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Republic of Korea)
Jun Sun (Tsinghua University, China)
Eugene Shwageraus (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
Massimiliano Fratoni (University of California, Berkeley, United States)
We also thank all the ETWG members for their support throughout the competition cycle and all the GIF members for spreading the word about this event.
On behalf of the GIF Education and Training Working Group
Dr Eunju Jun - Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute, Republic of Korea - ETWG Co‑chair and Jury member
Dr Konstantin Mikitiyuk - Paul Scherrer Institute, Switzerland – Jury’s chair and ETWG member
You can watch the winners' pitches on this page.
For more information and to watch all the pitches submitted for this 2025 edition of the competition, please access the competition page linked below.
First Place Winner - Dr Hannah Patenaude
Dr
Hannah PATENAUDE
Dr. Hannah Patenaude is a Director's Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Inorganic, Isotope, and Actinide Chemistry group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. As a recent graduate of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Radiochemistry Program, Hannah is experienced in actinide chemistry, specifically electrochemical processes, thermophysical properties measurements, and materials science techniques with an emphasis on molten salt systems to support the safe, secure deployment of Molten Salt Reactors. Outside of the laboratory, Hannah is active in public policy and studies the rhetoric and public perceptions of nuclear technology. She is active in organizations like the American Nuclear Society, serving on the Executive Committee of the Fuel Cycle & Waste Management Division and as the Vice Chair for the Trinity Section. Hannah spends her free time with her dog, Clementine - named after a LANL Manhattan Project era nuclear reactor - who provided support in Hannah’s 2025 Pitch Your Gen IV Research video.
2nd Place - Mr Paul Baret
Mr
Paul BARET
Mr. Paul Baret is a third-year PhD student in materials science (metallurgy) at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) and the MATEIS laboratory at INSA Lyon. He holds an engineering degree (MSc) in Materials and Processing from the ENI-Metz engineering school at the Université de Lorraine in France. Mr. Baret’s research focuses on the design of advanced austenitic oxide dispersion-strengthened (ODS) steels for nuclear fuel cladding in fast sodium reactors (SFRs). His experience includes the optimisation of various mechanical alloying routes, which led to a patent, as well as the microstructural and mechanical characterisation of the material from powders to bulk, including Post-Irradiation Examination (PIE). Nanoscale microstructural features, such as precipitates and cavities resulting from radiation-induced swelling, have been extensively investigated using in-situ small-angle X-ray scattering, atom probe tomography, and confirmed by transmission electron microscopy.
Popular vote - Mr Dorian Da Cunha
Dr
Dorian DA CUNHA
Mr. Dorian Da Cunha is a third year PhD candidate. He holds a master of science in Physical Engineering and Embedded Systems with a major in Nuclear Engineering and Energy from the ENSICAEN as well as a master’s degree in Experimental Nuclear Physics from the University of Caen Normandie. Prior to commencing his PhD, Dorian’s background includes a role as a Graduate Research Assistant at the Helsinki Accelerator Laboratory. Then, he was involved in the design of chain-reaction control devices for Molten-Salt Reactors at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA). His current research focuses on the interpretation and analysis of decay heat experiments in fast neutron reactors. He is developing new methodologies for interpreting these experiments and comparing them to computed values in order to validate CEA Scientific Calculation Tools. This work is being carried out in the Research Institute on Nuclear Systems for a Low Carbon Energy Production at CEA in partnership with Aix-Marseille University.
Dr Da Cunha successfully defended his thesis on the 26th of September 2025.