How Did Ericmoore Jossou Reach MIT?

In 2021, nuclear scientist Ericmoore Jossou joined MIT after working at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. He grew up in Badagry, Nigeria, where daily electricity shortages shaped his interest in energy. Today his research targets nuclear reactors as a high-density energy source for African adoption.

Who Is Ericmoore Jossou?

Ericmoore Jossou is a nuclear energy researcher and assistant professor at MIT's Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, where his group studies materials for advanced nuclear reactors. He is originally from Badagry, a fishing town in Lagos State, Nigeria, and joined MIT after working as a staff scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. In a 2023 interview in MIT's "The World at MIT" series, he described his move from national lab research to academia as the pursuit of science questions he had carried for years.

His research sits at the intersection of materials science and nuclear systems. According to his MIT faculty profile, his group studies how advanced reactor materials behave under irradiation, combining experiments with machine learning to speed up the discovery of materials that can survive harsh reactor environments. That combination is what he saw MIT offering over a comfortable national lab position.

Why Did He Choose Nuclear Energy Over Solar?

Electricity shortages in Nigeria pushed Jossou toward energy problems from his undergraduate years. He has said it was normal in Nigeria not to get a 24-hour electricity supply, so energy access became the problem he wanted to solve rather than an abstract interest.

The choice of nuclear over solar came down to energy density. In his telling, when he compared how much energy a solar cell can deliver against nuclear energy, nuclear came out ahead. That comparison led him to focus on generating electricity from nuclear reactors and on adapting the technology so African societies can adopt it. His current work at MIT, developing reactor materials and using machine learning to accelerate materials discovery, serves that same goal of making advanced reactors practical in more places.

What Was Growing Up in Badagry Like?

Badagry is a small coastal town in Lagos State with its own language and culture, and Jossou describes it as a place that holds a lot of Nigerian history. He was a curious child who kept asking why things exist, and by age ten he was reading so much that friends called him a bookworm.

Two influences shaped him early. The first was a book by surgeon Benjamin Carson called "Gifted Hands", which the transcript renders as "Gifted Ants"; it briefly made him want to be a neurosurgeon because he admired Carson's determination. The second was the idea of the United States as the frontier of discovery, a place that looked, in his words, like heaven and reachable at that time only through books. Both influences faded or transformed as he found his own field, but the habit of asking why questions carried through to his research career.

How Did He Move From Brookhaven Lab to MIT?

After finishing his PhD, Jossou moved to New York to join Brookhaven National Laboratory, a US Department of Energy national laboratory, where he became a staff scientist. He expected his career to end there because he genuinely enjoyed the work.

The shift happened when he asked himself what he could do at MIT that he could not do at Brookhaven. The answer was a set of science questions he had always cared about, and MIT's environment allowed him to pursue them while also building a research group. He now tells students that he does not see the work as a job but as a calling, and that solving these problems is what occupies his mind every day.

There is a smaller turning point worth naming: he hesitated to apply to MIT as a student. He told friends he wanted to go there but could not gather the courage to submit the application. The eventual move to Cambridge closed that loop years later, this time as a faculty member rather than an applicant.

What Does His MIT Research Group Actually Do?

The Jossou Research Group at MIT studies the thermal and mechanical behavior of nuclear fuel and structural materials, with an emphasis on combining atomistic simulations and machine learning. His group's stated aim is to shorten the timeline for qualifying new materials for advanced reactors, which is a bottleneck in deploying next-generation nuclear technology.

This matters for the goal he named in the interview: making nuclear energy a technology African societies can adopt. Advanced reactor designs depend on materials that tolerate radiation, high temperature, and corrosion, and the faster researchers can screen candidate materials, the faster such designs can be proven. Readers should treat the details of ongoing publications as evolving; the current scope is best checked on his MIT faculty profile and the group's pages.

What Can Early-Career Researchers Take From His Story?

Three practical lessons emerge from his account, and each is grounded in what he actually did rather than in general advice.

1. Pick the problem before the field. Jossou started from a real problem, unreliable electricity in Nigeria, and chose nuclear energy because of its energy density. The application followed the need, not prestige.
2. Research the environment, not just the institution. He assumed MIT was a different world until he recognized that MIT also let him do science he cared about. Comparing what questions you can pursue, not just where the name sits on a ranking, changed his decision.
3. Apply anyway. He skipped his own graduate application to MIT out of hesitation. The concrete fix for that failure mode is simply submitting the application and letting the committee decide.

His story also shows a less advertised route into top research universities: building a strong record at a national laboratory first, then moving to faculty when the research questions demand it. That path is common in US nuclear engineering but rarely appears in undergraduate advice.

Frequently Asked Questions

• Who is Ericmoore Jossou? He is an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, originally from Badagry in Lagos State, Nigeria. He joined MIT after working as a staff scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.

• Why does he study nuclear energy instead of solar? He has explained that nuclear energy offers higher energy density than solar cells, and he wanted to work on the energy source with the most potential for the reliable electricity supply Nigeria lacks. He now focuses on making nuclear reactor technology adoptable in African societies.

• What did he do before MIT? After completing his PhD he joined Brookhaven National Laboratory, a US Department of Energy facility in New York, where he served as a staff scientist. He moved to MIT when he saw it would let him pursue long-held science questions.

• What is Badagry? Badagry is a small historic fishing town in Lagos State, Nigeria, with its own language and culture. Jossou describes it as holding a significant share of Nigerian history.

• Where can I watch the original interview? The interview appears in "The World at MIT", a video series published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on its official MIT channel, where faculty members describe their personal and professional journeys.

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