Executive Bios

Dr. Sham is Technical Manager for Advanced Reactor Materials in the Nuclear Engineering Division at Argonne National Laboratory. His technical specialty is in deformation and failure of advanced materials and structural mechanics technologies for high temperature reactors. He is the Technology Area Lead for the cross-cutting Advanced Materials R&D for the Fast Reactors, Gas-Cooled Reactors and Molten Salt Reactors Campaigns of the Office of Advanced Reactor Technologies, DOE-NE. The portfolio includes advanced alloys, graphite, and ceramic composites for high temperature structural applications. In addition, he leads the DOE-NE international R&D efforts on advanced materials and code qualification for sodium-cooled fast reactor structural applications.

Dr. Sham is a member of the ASME Boiler and Pressure Vessel, BPV III Standards Committee and Executive Committee. He chairs BPV III Subgroup on Elevated Temperature Design, which is responsible for the development and maintenance of design rules for nuclear components in elevated temperature service.

Before he joined Argonne, Dr. Sham was a Distinguished R&D Staff Member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, held senior positions with AREVA NP Inc. and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory (KAPL), and was tenured faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. While at KAPL, Dr. Sham was Technical Lead, Structural Design Basis, Naval Reactors Prime Contractor Team. The team consisted of personnel from KAPL, Bechtel Bettis, and Bechtel Plant Machinery, Inc. and was responsible for the design and construction of the NASA Project Prometheus space nuclear power plant, circa 2005.

An ASME Fellow (2000), Dr. Sham has authored or co-authored over 160 articles in archival journals, conference proceedings and unclassified technical reports. He received a Bachelor degree with First Class Honors in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Glasgow, Scotland (1977), and Master and Doctoral degrees in Mechanics of Solids and Structures, and Master degree in Applied Mathematics, all from Brown University.