Two candidates for the position of director of the Nebraska Center for Energy Sciences Research will visit campus in late August to participate in interviews and make a public presentation. UNL faculty and staff are invited to attend the public presentations.

Prem S. Paul, vice chancellor for research and economic development, has announced that the candidates are William Worek and Mike Nastasi.

Worek's presentation will be Monday (Aug. 22) at 3:30 p.m. at the Van Brunt Visitors Center, 13th and Q streets. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was head of the Department of Mechanical Engineering from 2000 to 2009. Worek also was director of the university’s Energy Resources Center from 1998 to 2009.

He earned doctoral and master's degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Worek's research interests are heat and mass transfer, fluid flow, thermodynamics as applied energy efficient, renewable and sustainable energy systems. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and has held several leadership roles within the organization. He also is American editor of the journal Applied Thermal Engineering, coordinating editor of Heat Transfer Asian Research and associate editor of Energy – the International Journal. Read Worek’s full CV.

Nastasi will make a presentation Aug. 31 at 3:30 p.m. at the Jackie Gaughan Multicultural Center, Room 212. He has been director of the Department of Energy's Center for Materials at Irradiation and Mechanical Extremes at the Los Alamos National Laboratory since 2009. Previously, Nastasi was the nano electronics and mechanics thrust leader in DOE's Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies.

He earned doctoral, master's and bachelor's degrees in materials science and engineering from Cornell University. Nastasi's research interests include ion-solid interactions, irradiation induced phase transformation and irradiation effects in nanostructured materials. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society and the American Physical Society. Nastasi was one of the top 50 most-published authors at Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1996 to 2005. Read Nastasi's full CV.

NCESR was established in 2006 through a partnership between UNL and the Nebraska Public Power District. It supports promising research to develop renewable energy and enhance energy efficiency.