CivMin Prof. Ibrahim Ogunsanya receives Connaught award to advance materials for next-generation nuclear reactors
CivMin Prof. Ibrahim Ogunsanya has been recognized with a Connaught Major Research Challenge for Black Researchers Award for 2025-26.
Presented by U of T’s Connaught Fund in partnership with the Black Research Network, a U of T institutional strategic initiative, the annual award provides up to $250,000 to strengthen Black scholars’ research programs and help foster partnerships, create training opportunities and enhance competitiveness for external funding.
The award will support Ogunsanya’s research project, “Electrochemical–Microscopy-Driven Design of Radiation- and Coolant-Resistant Materials for Small Modular Reactor and Fusion Reactor Systems.” The project brings together expertise in electrochemistry, corrosion science, advanced materials, and in-situ electron and electrochemical microscopy characterization, as well as supported by Kinectrics, Ontario Power Generation (OPG), and Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL).
GENERAL GOAL: At the heart of the project is a fundamental materials challenge: next-generation nuclear reactors will expose materials to extremely demanding combinations of radiation, temperature/heat, mechanical stresses, and chemically aggressive environments. Understanding how materials deteriorate under these conditions is essential for developing nuclear systems that are safe, durable, and economically viable.
“We’re going to discover new damage-tolerant materials because this is not an area where you can use an inferior material,” says Ogunsanya. “We’re looking for something long-lasting. If something is going to be sustainable, we want to make sure that we don’t have to carry out repairs, particularly on the corrosion side of things.”
SPECIFIC GOAL: The research will examine materials being considered for both small modular reactors (SMR) and nuclear fusion systems.
Prof. Ogunsanya explains “In high school, we were taught that materials are made up of atoms, and those atoms possess nucleus that contains protons and neutrons. So, this nuclear project is looking to generate energy by splitting heavy nuclei (a fission process) or combining light nuclei (a fusion process)”
SMRs are advanced nuclear fission reactors designed to generate electricity and, depending on the reactor design, can be deployed in smaller units and potentially serve a variety of applications, including remote or smaller communities and industrial sites.
“SMR is designed to be more modular and scalable than a conventional large nuclear power plant,” explains Ogunsanya. “That flexibility could make SMR useful in different settings, including remote communities and industrial applications. But regardless of where a reactor is deployed, the materials still have to withstand the demanding conditions inside the system.”
Fusion presents an even more extreme materials challenge. “Unlike Fission reactors (which SMR is a class of) that splits heavy atomic nuclei to generate energy, Fusion reactors seek to generate energy by combining light atomic nuclei at extremely high temperatures,” explains Ogunsanya. Materials surrounding the fusion plasma can experience intense heat, high-energy neutron irradiation, and exposure to hydrogen and helium, creating complex combinations of damage that are difficult to reproduce and understand using conventional materials testing.
APPROACH TO ACHIEVE GOAL: The project will address these challenges by bringing together two complementary approaches. Ogunsanya’s research will use electrochemical and corrosion techniques to measure how quickly and under what conditions materials begin to degrade, while Prof. Jane Howe of U of T’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) will contribute advanced in-situ electron microscopy to observe the underlying changes at very small length scales.
“Electrochemistry can tell us the rate and driving force of corrosion, while microscopy can show us what is actually happening at the material interface,” says Ogunsanya. “The exciting part is putting those two pieces together so that we can watch degradation develop rather than only looking at the material after it has failed.”
The team will investigate conventional nuclear alloys alongside emerging materials, including advanced multi-principal element alloys, which offer considerable flexibility in composition and may provide improved resistance to extreme environments. Using advanced manufacturing, electrochemical testing, high-resolution microscopy, and computational modelling, the researchers will establish relationships between a material’s composition and microstructure and its long-term performance.
The support from Kinectrics, OPG, and CNL will help connect the fundamental research to practical challenges facing Canada’s nuclear sector. The project is intended not only to identify promising materials, but also to develop experimental methods, performance data and predictive models that can ultimately support materials selection and qualification for next-generation nuclear systems.
OVERALL COMMENT: For Ogunsanya, the interdisciplinary nature of the project is also an important part of its appeal.
“For me, this is a very exciting project,” he says. “I’m a Materials Scientist and Structural Engineer in the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering; so, from the outside, it is perhaps unconventional for a CivMin professor to lead a project focused on nuclear power. But that is also a testament to the diversity of CivMin, UofT’s FASE, and engineering as a whole. I can work with colleagues in Materials Science & Engineering and researchers across other disciplines to find solutions together. This is the beauty of engineering — when the expertise is there, it doesn’t matter what department you belong to.”
Broadly, Ogunsanya’s research explores how engineering materials deteriorate and how they can be designed to be more durable and sustainable. His work spans metals, cement and concrete, with a particular focus on corrosion and the long-term performance of materials used in infrastructure and energy systems. Through the Connaught award, this research program will expand into one of the most demanding materials challenges in the clean-energy sector: developing materials capable of reliably withstanding the extreme environments of the next generation of nuclear energy.