Russell is a native of Mena, Arkansas, and he is a 1992 graduate of Mena High School. During his time at Mena High School, Russ earned 10 athletic letters in 3 sports (football, basketball, and bas...view moreRussell is a native of Mena, Arkansas, and he is a 1992 graduate of Mena High School. During his time at Mena High School, Russ earned 10 athletic letters in 3 sports (football, basketball, and baseball) including 2-time All-District honors in football and All-District honors in baseball. He received a B.A. in Physics (summa cum laude) from Hendrix College (Conway, AR) while lettering 3 times for the Hendrix Warrior varsity baseball team. He earned an M.S. in Health Physics and a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University (College Station, TX). He is currently a Principal R&D Scientist/Engineer in the Applied Nuclear Technologies organization at Sandia National Laboratories located in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He serves as Principal Investigator for the Neutron Gamma Energy Transport (NuGET) Advanced Simulation & Computing software development project. Russ is a voting member of 3 ASTM International Committees (E10 - Nuclear Technology & Applications, E54 - Homeland Security Applications, and E61 - Radiation Processing). He serves as the U.S. Program Chair for the 15th and 16th International Symposium on Reactor Dosimetry. Russ is also Assistant Director of the microEP Graduate Program at the University of Arkansas. He has authored or co-authored more than 10 peer-reviewed scientific publications in the last 15 years.
Russ telecommutes to Sandia National Laboratories from Fayetteville, Arkansas where he lives with his wife and two daughters. He enjoys reading (mostly science fiction and science history), discussing sports and statistics, tinkering with an essentially useless Texas Hold’em poker analysis code that he has written, and complaining about both the Fightin’ Texas Aggie football team and the state of science literacy in this country. You can find out about all these things and more on his Minimum Publishable Unit (MPU) blog (http://depriest-mpu.blogspot.com/).view less
