CCHS Alumnus Cody Falconer Earns Ph.D

Churchill County High School graduate, Cody J. Falconer, has earned his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In 2013, Cody graduated from CCHS before attending the University of Nevada, Reno, where he attained his Bachelor’s of Science degree in Materials Science and Engineering, graduating Magna Cum Laude in May of 2017.

He was awarded a Nuclear Regulatory Commission Research Fellowship to fund his attendance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and earned his Master’s of Science in Materials Science and Engineering in June of 2020 with his research primarily sponsored by a United States Department of Energy Nuclear Energy University Program, Integrated Research project called NuSTEM (Nuclear Science, Technology, and Engineering for Molten Salt Reactors). While in pursuit of his Master’s Degree, he authored/coauthored two scientific publications on various topics covering materials corrosion in molten salts to enhance the understanding of materials behavior in next-generation nuclear reactors, and won the American Nuclear Society Nuclear Fuels and Structural Materials poster competition in 2018.

Cody continued his education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, distinguishing himself through published papers as coauthor and first author in Corrosion Science (2020) and npj Material Degradation (2022), covering topics concerning mass transport in molten fluoride salts. He successfully attained his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering in July of 2022 after defending his dissertation titled “Corrosion in Molten Fluoride Salt Media: Environmental Effects” and will be relocating to Seattle, Washington to work for Terampere, a company designing Generation IV nuclear reactor systems to provide carbon-free energy.