Kenneth A. Van Riper --- Background

KENNETH ALAN VAN RIPER

BACKGROUND

Proprietor, White Rock Science:

Develop, support, market, and distribute the Sabrina graphics program for MCNP visualization, the Moritz geometry tool, and the BodyBuilder human phantom generator program.
Develop models and perform radiation transport calculations using MCNP, the LAHET code system, MCNPX, and CINDER90. Applications have included shielding for the LANSCE Isotope Production Facility, radioisotope production at the Accelerator Production of Tritium target, and industrial x-ray facility, and radioactive waste transport containers.
Served on local organizing committee as Special Events Chair for meeting of Radiation and Shielding Division of ANS, Santa Fe, April 2002.
Astrophysics research.

Scientist, Radiation Safety Engineering:

Develop analysis, plotting, and user interface software on Windows NT and Windows CE for an RD100 award winning room temperature gamma ray spectrometer based on CZT crystals.
Research on radionuclide depth distribution by collimated gamma-ray spectroscopy.
Calculate doses from clinical x-ray procedures using MCNP.

1996: Editor, Los Alamos Independent Press; Oversaw operations of bi-weekly free Newspaper: supervised staff; edited, wrote, and/or formated articles and other content; coordinated contributions of columnists.
1981 - 1995: Technical Staff Member, Applied Theoretical and Computational Physics (X) Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory (Computational Physics Group '81-'83, Radiation Transport Group '83 -'95)

Principal developer and contact for the Sabrina computer code for visualization of 3-dimensional geometries, primarily in support of the Monte Carlo code MCNP. Member of a team building the Justine graphical user interface to the Laramie suite of radiation transport codes and developing the AVATAR method for automatic generation of Monte Carlo variance reduction parameters. Supervised students working on the projects. Prepared papers and delivered presentations.
Published research on topics in Theoretical Astrophysics, including studies of gamma-ray transport in supernovae using MCNP, calculations of thermal conductivities in the presence of a quantizing magnetic field, models of heat conduction and radiation transport in neutron stars, and simulations of stellar core collapse. Served as project leader for the astrophysics visitors program.
As a member of a team developing and maintaining a computer code widely used for weapon design, implemented physics models, wrote a document describing the physics and algorithms in the code, provided general user support, developed new input and problem generation modules, and created an interactive program for mesh generation.
Administered a network of UNIX workstations
Developed a Tektronix emulator and associated graphical user interface

Last modified: May, 2002