Dave Kropaczek, PhD – Chief Executive Officer
As CEO, Dave Kropaczek leverages a career of experience across industry, labs, and academia to lead Veracity in tackling key problems facing the nuclear industry, such as in fuel performance, thermal-hydraulics, and reactor kinetics with applications to accident-tolerant fuel, loss of coolant accidents, reactivity insertion accidents, pellet clad interaction, and fuel dry out.
Formerly, he was a distinguished research staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and served as deputy technical director for the Department of Energy, Nuclear Energy Advanced Modeling and Simulation (NEAMS) program. Before that, he served as Director for the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of LWRs (CASL), which focused on high-fidelity, coupled multiphysics reactor applications for the nuclear industry.
Dr. Kropaczek joined ORNL in 2018 after serving as CASL Chief Scientist and Duke Energy Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering at North Carolina State University for three years. He has over 30 years of experience in nuclear energy with a focus on computational methods development in nuclear fuel cycle optimization, reactor physics, and thermal-hydraulics for both light water and advanced reactors. Previous experience included positions in R&D and leadership within Westinghouse, General Electric, and most recently, Studsvik Scandpower as CEO.
He has published and presented over 100 papers in reactor physics and fuel cycle optimization and holds 28 patents related to nuclear fuel. Dr. Kropaczek is a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society. He has served in many roles in the American Nuclear Society, including Reactor Physics Division (RPD) Chair and General and Technical Program Chairs for several RPD-sponsored topical meetings (including MC 2021 and Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management).
Benjamin Collins, PhD – Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Benjamin S. Collins is a leading expert in nuclear reactor analysis and multiphysics simulation, with over two decades of experience spanning academia, national laboratories, and industry. He is the Chief Technology Officer at Veracity Nuclear, where he leads development of advanced modeling tools and reactor design capabilities. Prior to this, he held senior roles at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, including Group Lead for Reactor Multiphysics, and was a principal architect of the MPACT reactor physics code and the high-fidelity VERA core simulator.
Dr. Collins has authored or co-authored more than 200 publications and technical reports, contributed to multiple award-winning software platforms, and holds several copyrights on simulation tools used across the nuclear industry. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where he mentors students and advances reactor design methodologies for next-generation systems.
A recipient of the R&D 100 Award and the Early Career Reactor Physicist Award, Dr. Collins continues to shape the future of nuclear energy through his leadership in software development, multiphysics integration, and digital twin technologies. Dr. Collins earned his PhD in Nuclear Engineering and Scientific Computing from the University of Michigan, where he also developed novel multiscale methods for reactor analysis.
Shane Stimpson, PhD – Director of Business Development
Since June 2025, Dr. Shane Stimpson has worked within Veracity Nuclear LLC as a senior nuclear engineer and director of business development to develop and deploy analysis solutions for commercial LWRs and advanced reactors. Prior to joining Veracity, Dr. Stimpson worked in the Advanced Technologies division of BWX Technologies, Inc. (BWXT) as a technical reactor design leader for multiple nuclear thermal propulsion projects, most recently as the Reactor Subsystem IPT Lead for the DRACO project.
Before that he was a research staff member at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), primarily working in the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Reactors (CASL). As the ORNL lead developer of MPACT, the primary deterministic neutron transport code in the Virtual Environment for Reactor Applications (VERA), he was responsible for numerous capabilities and improvements pertaining to computational performance, accuracy, and coupling efforts, with over 100 publications in journals, conference proceedings, and technical reports.
He holds a BS (Georgia Institute of Technology), MSE/PhD (University of Michigan), all in nuclear engineering, and an MBA (University of Illinois).
Andrew Godfrey – Senior Nuclear Analyst
Andrew Godfrey is a licensed professional engineer with 27 years of experience in the nuclear industry, including software development, core design, and reactor analysis experience for PWRs and BWRs. This includes experience at Duke Energy, General Electric, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he led the applications technical area within the CASL program. Andrew has extensive experience with the PWR reload design process including core design and safety analysis using the CASMO-4/SIMULATE-3 code suite. He holds a BS from North Carolina State University.
Aaron Graham, PhD – Senior Nuclear Engineer
Dr. Aaron M. Graham is a nuclear engineer with expertise in reactor physics, neutronics methods development, and multiphysics simulation for light water reactors. His work includes development of nodal and high fidelity core simulators and software tools for multi-cycle core design and optimization. Prior to this, he spent nearly a decade at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he was the technical lead for the MPACT core simulator and a key contributor to the VERA software suite.
His experience includes modeling and simulation support for PWRs and BWRs, with specific contributions to nodal methods, cross section generation, transient capabilities, and coupling with thermal hydraulics and fuel performance models. Dr. Graham holds a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences from the University of Michigan, with research focused on subgrid methods for axial heterogeneity in neutron transport. His work has supported regulatory, utility, and vendor applications, and he has contributed to multiple industry partnerships involving advanced reactor modeling.
Micah Best – Software Developer
Micah Best is a nuclear engineer at Veracity Nuclear LLC, where he works on high-fidelity simulation tools for advanced reactor analysis, with a focus on thermal-hydraulics, fuel performance, and multiphysics coupling. His work includes the development of scalable, GPU-accelerated solvers using PETSc and Kokkos, as well as robust C++ and Python frameworks for system-level modeling and simulation. Micah has contributed to the enhancement of thermal-mechanical models for fuel behavior.
He has supported efforts spanning machine learning integration, code validation, and advanced numerical methods for reactor safety analysis. He holds a BS in mechanical engineering and an MS in nuclear engineering from Texas A&M University.
