Management Team

Irfan Ali

President & CEO

With an extensive record in the field of technology, Mr. Ali offers a unique combination of executive management, technical and marketing skills. A professed technologist, he has a passion for bringing new, innovative technology to the market in the form of products and solutions that address complex, contemporary problems. Mr. Ali prides himself on his ability to bring together diverse, talented individuals into a single, focused, effective team with a common purpose. He has a proven track record of building global businesses and organizations, involving a number of innovative, emerging technologies.

Prior to joining ARC, Mr. Ali was President and CEO of Lambda OpticalSystems, a late-stage, venture-backed startup building high-end optical networking equipment. The company successfully raised funds in three rounds of venture financing, had contracts with the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Department of Energy, and at its peak employed over 75 engineers.

Before Lambda, Mr. Ali was President of CommWorks Corporation, a 3Com company. At CommWorks, Mr. Ali had complete responsibility for all aspects of the business, growing its revenues to $770 million per year, improving profitability from a loss to 20% net operating margin, and expanding the organization to over 1,700 employees globally.

Mr. Ali received an MS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from Southern Methodist University. He was also a founding member of the ATM Forum.

Edward Arthur, PhD

Vice President, Technology

Dr. Arthur, formerly head of nuclear programs at LANL, is a recognized international expert in reactor system enterprise modeling and deployment. In his position at Los Alamos, he was involved in a wide range of nuclear technologies and applications, including advanced reactor systems design, accelerator applications for the destruction of nuclear waste, and management of nuclear materials to reduce proliferation risk. His work emphasized modeling of relationships between energy use and environmental effects, advanced simulation for new nuclear system development and simulation to optimize fuel cycle management systems.

Dr. Arthur has published approximately 100 papers on a wide variety of technical subjects and has received numerous awards, and extensive recognition, throughout his education and career. This includes the U.S. DOE Excellence Award, appointment as technical advisor to the billion-dollar Japanese Proton Accelerator Research Center, recognition as a national Woodrow Wilson Fellow, membership in the Sigma Xi outstanding science achievement society, and Phi Beta Kappa.

Dr. Arthur received his BS (magna cum laude) in Physics and History from Tulane University and his PhD in Nuclear Physics from the University of Virginia.

Ronald King

Vice-President, Operations and Mechanical Design

Mr. King is a recognized international expert in design and maintenance for fast reactor systems. His career spans more than 30 years at ANL and INL, where he was responsible for mechanical system design and operational safety, of the EBR-II reactor. He had a lead role in the major fast-reactor design initiatives undertaken by the Argonne National Laboratories, leading the effort to incorporate lessons learned from EBR-II in future reactor designs, forming the basis for the ARC reactor. He was the senior technical advisor for design of systems supporting the decommissioning of the BN-350 reactor in Kazakhstan, a sodium-cooled fast reactor, working closely with the Kazakhstan National Nuclear Center.

Mr. King has been an active member of the American Nuclear Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers organizing international panels and meetings on sodium-cooled and other reactor technologies. He has published more than thirty papers on sodium reactor technology and related topics. He was a leading member of the ASME boiler and pressure vessel code sub-committee that developed design standards for sodium-cooled fast reactor systems.

David Wade, PhD

Vice-President, Reactor Design & Analysis

Dr. Wade, formerly the Director of the Reactor Analysis Division at Argonne National Laboratory, is a recognized expert in reactor physics. In his 34-year career at Argonne, he was involved in the design and analysis of the full range of fast reactor systems addressed by U.S. DOE, including development of core and reactor designs for the Generation IV reactor concepts. He had overall responsibility for reactor core design and the safety case for the Integral Fast Reactor, U.S. DOE’s lead program in the 1980s and a predecessor to the ARC reactor. He holds the rank of a Distinguished Fellow Engineer, the highest technical rank at Argonne.

His current interest in small modular reactor systems has placed him in a leading position with the International Atomic Energy Agency (“IAEA”) where he has participated for the last 10 years in studies for deploying compact, proliferation-resistant reactors to developing countries. He is the lead author of a major IAEA report on the subject that has been published recently.

Dr. Wade received his BS in Mechanical Engineering and MS in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Illinois, his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Leon Walters, PhD

Vice-President, Fuel Design

Dr. Walters is a recognized international expert in nuclear reactor fuel. He has had a long and distinguished career at Argonne, where he rose to a position of Director, Fuels and Materials Division and then Director of Engineering Division, managing tens of millions of dollars related to fast-reactor development. His experience is both hands-on and analytic. He led the development of fuels and materials for fast reactors over a 34-year career, concentrating on metal fuel, which is the fuel of choice for the ARC reactor. Its development involved many innovations, which were then proven in irradiation testing of the EBR-II. Perhaps his most important achievement was the successful design of plutonium-bearing metal fuel and later the inclusion of minor actinides. In the course of this work, Dr. Walters has led the design and construction of three first-of-a-kind fuel fabrication facilities. Later in his career, he turned his attention to hydrogen production using nuclear power and preservation of the fast-reactor knowledge base.
 
Dr. Walters received his BS, MS and PhD in Metallurgical Engineering from Purdue University. He is the recipient of the University of Chicago’s Distinguished Performance Award and Purdue University’s Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award.

John Sackett, PhD

Senior Advisor

Dr. Sackett, a former Associate Director of ANL and an internationally recognized expert in reactor design and safety, led much of the initial development work in small fast-reactors for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Since his departure from ANL, he has served as a consultant to U.S. DOE and is a part time employee of the Idaho National Laboratory as a senior advisor. During his extensive career, Dr. Sackett has managed large-scale nuclear programs for ANL and U.S. DOE involving hundreds of millions of dollars of R&D funding. He is considered one of the foremost authorities on small reactor design. His experience with fast-reactors and associated fuel recycling is not just theoretical; early in his career he was the Director of the EBR-II Division where he was responsible for day-to-day operation of the reactor and conduct of its experimental programs. He is known as an originator of the “inherently safe” approach to reactor design, a concept demonstrated in landmark tests at EBR-II in 1986. These tests changed the approach to reactor safety worldwide and are the cornerstone of the ARC reactor design. For this work he received considerable recognition, including the Walker Cissler Award, an international award for achievements in fast-reactor design and an American Nuclear Society special award for his contributions to reactor safety.

Dr. Sackett received the University of Chicago Award for outstanding work at ANL and rose to the level of Senior Engineer, the highest technical ranking at ANL, and is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society. He held numerous management positions at ANL, retiring as Associate Laboratory Director for Engineering Research. He is widely published and has received many other awards for his work.

Dr. Sackett received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Idaho, where he was selected as the outstanding graduating engineer, and his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Arizona.