FORNL - Key Persons
Alan obtained his BA and MA degrees in history from the University of Kentucky. He began his career at the Ronald Reagan Presidential library as an archivist. He has worked for the Office of Presidential Libraries at the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C. He served as the Executive Director of the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee from 2003 to 2009. From 2009 to 2016, Alan served as founding Director of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. In 2016, Alan was appointed as founding Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a position he held until 2019. Then he returned to Tennessee and became the director of the American Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge. If elected, Alan will begin his first two-year term on the FORNL Board.
Carolyn Krause was elected to the FORNL Board of Directors in 2021. She has been retired since 2011, was a science writer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory for 35 years, and editor of the award-winning ORNL Review research magazine for 25 years. Previously, she worked as a feature writer for The Pittsburgh Press and science reporter for The Oak Ridger. A fellow of the international Society for Technical Communication, she served as president of STC's East Tennessee Chapter for a year. A native of Pittsburgh, Pa., Carolyn holds a B.A. degree in English from the College of Wooster, an M.A.T. degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and an M.S.J. degree from the Medill School of Journalism of Northwestern University. She has been engaged in volunteer publicity and newsletter writing for the Rotary Club of Oak Ridge, First Presbyterian Church, and Oak Ridge Institute for Continued Learning. She launched a lecture series and recruited lecturers as a member of the ORICL board for which she is serving as a publicist. Previously, she served on the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association board and has repeatedly publicized ORCMA's fundraiser, the Rock to Bach Music Festival. She covers talks by FORNL speakers and writes guest columns for The Oak Ridger and contributes write-ups on mostly ORNL managers and researchers for The Oak Ridger's weekly "Historically Speaking" column. She has written an unpublished history on mercury contamination in Oak Ridge and the response to it by Oak Ridge scientists. She and her husband Herb, retired atomic physicist from ORNL and former secretary of FORNL, have two grown children and two grandchildren.
David E. Fields is a physicist, currently directing Tamke-Allan Observatory (TAO) at RSCC. He received his MSc and PhD. in Condensed Matter and Materials Physics from the University of Wisconsin and was employed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, served as guest scientist at the German Federal Health Office, and represented the International Atomic Energy Agency in Brazil, returning there to work at two federal research facilities and present a graduate-level course on Environmental Transport, Human Exposure, and Risk Evaluation. He subsequently consulted with NASA-MSFC, simulating the performance of spacecraft radiation shields. David is ORION president, TVIW/IRG Founding Board member, FORNL board member, former TAS president, and former Director of the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA). He has 206 publications and two patents. Current active research interests include Dyson Dots, climate change, and radio transmission through magnetized plasmas.
David Mullins received his BS in Chemistry from the College of William and Mary in 1978 and a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1984. He came to ORNL as a Post Doc in 1986 and joined the staff in the Surface Science and Catalysis group in 1988. He retired from the lab in 2018. His research interests focused on using synchrotron radiation for studying chemical processes on powdered catalysts and single crystal surfaces. He was the developer of, and spokesperson for, a soft x-ray beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) and served several terms on the NSLS Users Executive Committee. He is a fellow of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) and served as Treasurer of the Tennessee Valley Chapter of the AVS for 20 years. He is also a member of the American Chemical Society and the North American Catalysis Society and served as president of the Southeast Chapter of the Catalysis Society. He has been treasurer of the First Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge since 1996 and treasurer of Aid to Distressed Families of Appalachian Counties (ADFAC) since 2006.
Ellen Smith graduated from Carleton College (B.A. in Geology, 1974) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (M.S. in Water Resources Management, 1979). She retired from Oak Ridge National Laboratory in August 2018 after 36 years on the research staff of the Environmental Sciences Division, where she enjoyed the opportunity to contribute to addressing variety of technical and societal challenges related to energy technology, waste management, and activities of the Department of Energy and other government agencies. Her principal areas of expertise are geology, hydrology, waste management, and environmental impact assessment, but she usually just calls herself "an environmental scientist." Ellen is an elected member of the Oak Ridge City Council (2007 to 2012 and 2014 to present), was previously a member of the city's Environmental Quality Advisory Board, has been active for many years as a citizen volunteer engaged with diverse environmental concerns in and around East Tennessee, and currently serves on the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Advocacy Committee of the National League of Cities. Her current local civic activities include board service or memberships in Advocates for the Oak Ridge Reservation, TORCH, Keep Anderson County Beautiful, the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge, Oak Ridge Altrusa, Oak Ridge Breakfast Rotary, and Tennessee Citizens for Wilderness Planning. She joined FORNL in 2018 upon her retirement from ORNL, after having attended FORNL luncheons and lectures on an occasional basis during her ORNL career. She was elected to the FORNL board in 2020, for a two-year term.
Fred Peretz grew up in Milwaukee and obtained bachelor and master's degrees in nuclear engineering at the University of Wisconsin. Fred began working at ORNL in 1977, initially in Central Engineering Services, then moving into Chemical Technology and later divisions of Nuclear Science and Engineering. Fred led and participated in projects ranging from the Advanced Neutron Source design and the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment Remediation to medical isotope separations, liquid waste and effluent management, and reactor and radiochemical facility decommissioning. He retired from the lab at the end of 2017 and performs occasional consulting work. Fred lives in Farragut with his wife Jean and enjoys trips to Montana to visit their daughter Annie. He volunteers at the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, the American Museum of Science and Energy, Tennessee Achieves, the local section of the American Nuclear Society, and Farragut Presbyterian Church. His hobbies include bicycling, sailing, hiking, astronomy and reading.
Job Titles:
- past President and Adjunct Board Member
Herb was employed by ORNL in the Chemistry Division from 1970 to 1982 and then in the Physics Division until his retirement in 2008. He holds a B.S. degree in physics from Drexel University (1965) and a Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Pittsburgh (1970), specializing in experimental atomic and chemical physics. As a Senior Research Staff Member at ORNL, he studied a wide variety of fundamental physical mechanisms by which low-velocity neutral atoms and molecules or swift moving ions interact with other gaseous or solid matter using particle accelerators at ORNL and other facilities such as the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. He has authored or co-authored 171 refereed scientific publications (listed in Google Scholar) in the fields of atomic, molecular, chemical, electron, surface, and laser physics that involve phenomena occurring at a collision energy from 0.03 eV to 33 TeV (an energy range of 15 orders of magnitude).
Herb was a founding board member for the Montessori School of Oak Ridge, and has served on the boards of the First Presbyterian Church of Oak Ridge and the Oak Ridge Civic Music Association. He was a recent president and board member of the Oak Ridge Chorus. He has been a judge at area science fairs and has tutored students in mathematics, physics and chemistry at Roane State Community College in Oak Ridge. He and his wife, Carolyn, live in Oak Ridge.
Herb was an elected FORNL board member and served as FORNL secretary from 2012 to 2017, and a non-voting adjunct board member from 2018-2020. After a year hiatus from the FORNL board in 2021, he was elected to a two-year board term in 2022 and served as President of the board in 2022 to 2024. He serves as a non-voting adjunct board member now.
Jim Rome received 4 degrees from MIT and worked at ORNL in the Fusion Energy Division for 25 years. He later switched to doing computer security and air traffic analysis. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Kathy received Ph.D. in physics from University of Tennessee in 1976. She was employed at ORNL for 36 years, working in areas of civil defense, radiation safety, risk evaluation, environmental analysis, and emergency planning and exercise creation and evaluation for Departments of Energy and Defense and Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She performed work for International Atomic Energy Agency in Egypt and Mexico and at the headquarters in Austria.
Kent is a Chicago-born chemical engineer with degrees from Purdue (BS, MS) and UTK (PhD). His nuclear-related career started out as a co-op and "practice school" student at Argonne, moving to Oak Ridge in 1970 to work at K-25. In 1985 he transferred to ORNL the Engineering Technology Division which by the time he retired in 2010 had become the Nuclear Science and Technology Div. Most of his work has dealt with the economics of nuclear power with emphasis on the fuel cycle. Post retirement he has worked part time as a consultant for INL, ORNL, and presently Argonne. Other activities include gardening, music, reading, hiking, travel, and three Grandchildren. Kent served as FORNL President from 2019-2020.
Steve Overbury grew up in Albuquerque NM, a child of an Engineer at Sandia Laboratory who endowed him with a deep interest in science. He double majored in Chemistry and Mathematics at University of New Mexico (BS 1972), and then went on to graduate school in Chemistry at University California Berkeley, completing a PhD in Physical Chemistry (Surface Chemistry) in 1976. In 1977 he started his 39 year career at ORNL, eventually ascending to level group leader and Distinguished Research Staff before retiring in 2016. Initially, hired to work with Sheldon Datz in the area of plasma-wall interactions he developed a program in using ion scattering as a tool to probe surface structure, and gradually evolved increasingly into heterogeneous catalysis. He enthusiastically enjoyed collaborating with many researchers at ORNL as a DOE grantee in areas ranging from structure-function relations in catalysis by Au, cerium oxide and carbon; metal support interactions in catalysis; surface chemistry of oxygenates; electron-proton reactions at electrochemical interfaces, operando spectroscopy of model catalysts; soft x-ray photoemission of surface chemisorbates and redox processes in catalysts. In retirement he enjoys traveling in western US, playing music (specifically guitar), and browsing a wide range of scientific and mathematical topics.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board
- Research Engineer at ORNL
Syd Ball is still a part-time research engineer at ORNL, retired from full-time in 2011, re-joining in 2012. He came to ORNL straight from Yale (1957) with a B.E.E. and was transformed into a nuclear engineer by attending ORSORT and focusing on R&D of advanced reactors. He worked on HTGRs for 40 years, including the GT-MHR (gas turbine modular helium reactor) for plutonium disposition. This was a joint venture with Russia to develop means for disposition of their excess weapons-grade plutonium. Good idea! He spent several years on the ORNL nuclear desalination program, and also had many international assignments, mainly via the IAEA, with Japan, China, and South Africa.
He was invited by the IAEA to Vienna in May 2022 to give the opening talk at a molten salt reactor revival meeting. At his ripe old age, he's one of the relatively few still kicking who was involved in the design, operation, and analysis of the MSRE 60 years ago. This gave him a chance to beat the drum about how the world is botching efforts to fix our energy problems, and how to do it right!
Ray is a professional theoretical /experimental physicist with over 40 years of experience in pure and applied physics at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and academic institutions. His research activities have encompassed a broad spectrum of field specialties including properties of and interactions between atoms, molecules, nanoparticles, photons, electrons, and electromagnetic fields, and interactions of these entities with laser beams, surfaces and liquids. He is internationally recognized in the fields of nonlinear optics and atomic and molecular physics. He has published more than 136 papers in professional refereed journals in physics, chemistry, and optics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, and was a Research Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee Department of Physics and Astronomy in Knoxville, and a visiting scientist at the FOM Institute in Amsterdam, Netherlands. He holds 3 US patents. In his career Dr. Garrett has always been the one people came to with their questions on problems involving subjects from quantum physics to experimental mysteries to automobiles to washing machines. With his penchant for uncovering cause/effect relationships and for providing clear explanations of technical issues in layman's terms, he has served as a physical forensics expert in legal proceedings.