Rizwan Uddin is Department Head of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been in nuclear engineering education for over 30 years. He directs the Virtual Education and Research Laboratory in NPRE.

Uddin conducts research in modeling and simulation of reactor engineering problems. His students have also examined the use of 3D immersive, virtual reality systems and computer games for education and training in the nuclear field. His interests also include nuclear engineering education, computational biology, nonlinear dynamical systems, reactor thermal hydraulics and computational fluid dynamics, homogenization techniques, nuclear reactor theory and computational methods. He has worked on the development of digital test beds for cyber security assessment of NPP control rooms and is among the pioneers of the use of VR in the nuclear power field.

A Fellow of the American Nuclear Society, Uddin has been recognized with the 2016 ANS Arthur Holly Compton Award and the 2015 American Society of Engineering Education’s Glenn Murphy Award for his teaching and research accomplishments. He was honored in 2017 with the Campus Award for Excellence in Guiding Undergraduate Research and in 2018 with the Campus Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching. He is the recipient of the ANS HFICD Don Miller award.