David Rivera is a Research and Development Associate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, working within the Advanced Nuclear Materials group. He is also a University of Tennessee–Oak Ridge Innovation Institute Fellow, working with the institute’s Fusion Technology and Materials for Extreme Environments Convergent Research Initiative.

Rivera’s work focuses on the development of high heat flux materials, primarily by advancing experimental and computational capabilities to support materials design for future fusion reactor systems. His research aims to enable materials that can withstand the thermomechanical extremes inherent to fusion environments by integrating computational materials science with experimental studies of materials under extreme conditions, providing insight into their mechanical behavior, particularly in temperature and strain-rate regimes that are difficult to access experimentally.

Rivera’s primary research interests lie at the intersection of materials science, mechanics, and uncertainty quantification, specifically how these fields converge to advance our understanding of the mechanical behavior of materials at elevated temperatures and strain rates. Interests include:

• High heat flux materials: Optimizing material microstructures and processing routes to withstand thermal extremes.
• Materials modeling: Developing microstructure aware models to analyze material be- havior under extreme temperatures and strain rates.
• Radiation damage: Advancing new analysis techniques and experimental methods to assess radiation-induced damage.
• Uncertainty quantification (UQ): Applying UQ methods to evaluate how uncertainty influences predictive models of large-scale material deformation.

Prior to joining UT-ORII, Rivera worked in the aerospace and defense industry. Before that, he was a materials scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Education