Rusty Towell

Rusty Towell is the founding director for ACU’s premiere research project called NEXT (Nuclear Energy eXperimental Testing). The mission of ACU’s NEXT Lab is to provide global solutions to the world’s need for energy, water and medical isotopes by advancing the technology of molten salt reactors while educating future leaders in nuclear science and engineering. Established in 2016, NEXT is building a molten salt research reactor in collaboration with the NEXT Research Alliance (NEXTRA) which includes Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, and the University of Texas at Austin.

Rusty has a BS degree in Engineering Physics from ACU and a Ph.D in nuclear physics from the University of Texas. He served in the U.S. Navy where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant while serving as an instructor at the Naval Nuclear Power School. Rusty completed a postdoctoral research fellowship with Los Alamos National Laboratory working on the PHENIX experiment at the Brookhaven National Lab, and in 2001 he joined the physics faculty at ACU.

For the past 20 years, Rusty has worked at many different national labs on several international research projects. His 250 articles and other scholarly writings have been cited more than 30,000 times by peer-reviewed publications.