The Effects of Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Completing a Radiological Engineering Design Project

Lieutenant Colonel Ken Allen, PhD PE is an Academy Professor with the Department of Physics and Nuclear Engineering. He graduated from USMA in 1993 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering. He is an aviation officer who served in B Co., 3-23 Av Hunter Army Airfield, GA as a UH-60 helicopter flight platoon leader and an assistant battalion operations officer. LTC Allen served as a Company Commander for A Co. 78th Aviation Bn, Camp Zama, Japan. He earned a Master of Science degree in Nuclear Engineering from The University of Florida in 2003. He was an assistant professor in the West Point Department of Physics from 2003 – 2006 teaching core physics and nuclear engineering. After leaving the department, he served two years as a reactor operator supervisor and senior reactor operator for the TRIGA research reactor at the Armed Forces Radiobiological Research Institute, Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences, Bethesda MD. In 2008, he was selected to be an Academy Professor in the Department of Physics and Nuclear Engineering. In 2011, LTC Allen completed his PhD at the University of South Carolina where his dissertation research involved designing an innovative sodium cooled fast reactor for the destruction of minor actinides in used nuclear fuel. LTC Allen is a member of the American Nuclear Society, Society of Physics Students, Phi Kappa Phi, and Tau beta Pi.