Rate My Professor Paul Wilson

Paul Wilson is the Grainger Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering. He earned a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto in 1992, an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1995, a Dr.-Ing. in Mechanical Engineering from the Technical University of Karlsruhe in 1998, and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1999. Wilson joined the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an assistant professor in August 2001 as part of the Energy Systems and Policy Hiring Initiative. He subsequently chaired the Energy Analysis and Policy graduate certificate program and served on the governance committee of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

Wilson's research specializes in Monte Carlo methods, nuclear fuel cycles, energy policy, proliferation analysis, transmutation/depletion/activation, with applications to radiation shielding, nuclear waste management, and nuclear non-proliferation. He leads the Computational Nuclear Engineering Research Group. Professionally, he served on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Generation IV Technology Roadmap Committee from 2001 to 2003 and consulted for CEA Saclay, ERC Petten, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future in 2010. As founding president of the North American Young Generation in Nuclear, he chaired American Nuclear Society committees including the Student Sections Committee and the Special Committee on Electronic Communications and Publications, and represented ANS and NA-YGN at international climate change negotiations in 1998 and 1999. His awards include American Nuclear Society Fellow (2023), Arthur Holly Compton Award (2018), Young Member Advancement Award (2019), Grainger Professorship (2016), and Presidential Citation (1996). Key publications encompass "Best practices for scientific computing" (2014), "The ARIES-AT advanced tokamak, advanced technology fusion power plant" (2006), "Adjoint-Weighted Tallies for k-Eigenvalue Calculations with Continuous-Energy Monte Carlo" (2011), "Decarbonizing the electric sector: Combining renewable and nuclear energy using thermal storage" (2012), and "The Infinity Two fusion pilot plant baseline plasma physics design" (2025).