Congratulations to Dr. William R. Hamel, MABE professor, for receiving the Ray Goertz Award on June 16, 2014 at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Annual Meeting in Reno, NV.
The Ray Goertz Award was established in 1985 to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of remote technology in hazardous environments. It honors the late Raymond C. Goertz for his lifetime contribution to the advancement of remote handling systems and for his development of the master-slave manipulator. Starting with the planning of the first formal informational exchange meeting held in 1951, Ray Goertz was also instrumental in the founding of the Robotics and Remote Systems Division (RRSD), formerly known as Remote Systems Technology Division (RSTD). This award is presented approximately every two years, it is an ANS level award, and it is the highest honor presented by the Robotics and Remote Systems Division.
Pictured in Front: Ray Goertz
Hamel stated, “The Ray Geortz Award is the highest recognition one can receive from the nuclear community regarding technical contributions to robotics and remote technology. I am deeply humbled and appreciative to receive the award. Over the years, I have admired the contributions and accomplishments of those who have previously received the award. To now be on that list is an unexpected and cherished career accomplishment for me. I am very thankful to have been considered worthy of such a distinguished honor.”
This outstanding award was given to Hamel because of his commendable contributions in the area of robotics and remote systems for nuclear environments while at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and the University of Tennessee, spanning from the 1970s until now. His primary contributions include technical and visionary leadership in the creation of the first microprocessor-based servomanipulator system, the jointly developed Central Research Laboratories (CRL)/ORNL M-2 dual arm force reflecting manipulator system. All servomanipulator systems have since been influenced by that early design. Hamel continued to advance the field of robotics and remote systems by leading the development of the advanced servomanipulator system, a remotely maintainable dual arm system with an architecture amenable to rad hardening designed to support spent fuel reprocessing. He then furthered his professional experience by co-leading, with program managers at various national laboratories, the Robotics Technology Development Program (RTDP) for the Department of Energy (DOE), which is one of the largest U.S. robotics-related research programs ever established. The RTDP was active throughout the 1990s in generating technology solutions for cleanup of DOE sites. Hamel was also instrumental in early experiments in telerobotics, and has consistently contributed technical papers to RRSD conferences since ANS’s first topicals in the early 1980s.
The MABE department congratulates Hamel for all of his hard work and accomplishments.
For more information about ANS: http://www.ans.org