She is a member of the Building Envelope Systems Research Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) with her current research includes evaluating the performance of easy-to-install air barrier technologies, examining the feasibility of new air leak detectors for building enclosures, assessing the cost-effectiveness of various techniques to retrofit commercial building envelopes, and exploring the potential use of advanced manufacturing in building envelopes. In 2015, she was selected among researchers who were collaborating under the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center for Building Energy Efficiency (CERC BEE) to brief Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz on advancements in air sealing technologies. As a continuation of this work, she is leading a project under the second phase of CERC BEE aiming to improve the energy performance of architectural insulated concrete precast panels using latest developments in advanced composites, 3D printing, and material science. With the support from the National Science Foundation, she received a doctorate in civil engineering from the University of Texas-Austin for her work on human exposure to hazardous air pollutants in homes. She is a registered professional engineer (inactive) and a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Accredited Professional.
After completion of a doctorate in nuclear engineering from North Carolina State University, he joined Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and worked in radiation transport, fluid flow, and numerical methods. He was one of the original developers of the Truchas computer code, developed as part of the NNSA/ASC program for metal casting simulation and currently being applied to additive manufacturing. In 1997, he left LANL to join Blue Sky Studios, a computer animation company outside New York City, earning credits on the Academy Award-nominated feature film “Ice Age” and the Oscar-winning short animated film “Bunny.” In 2001, he returned to LANL and became group leader of the Computational Physics Group (CCS-2), a group of over 70 doctorate scientists, students, and other staff conducting research in modeling and simulation of physical phenomena for applications ranging from ocean and climate to nuclear weapons and nuclear energy systems. He led an internally-funded research and development effort to investigate hybrid computing architectures, such as video cards (GPUs) as high-performance co-processors, and subsequently led the Advanced Algorithms & Applications team for the Roadrunner supercomputer. Roadrunner augmented standard processors with enhanced versions of the processor used in PlayStation 3 game consoles and was the first system to achieve a sustained performance exceeding 1 Petaflop /s (1015 operations per second). In 2008. John moved to ORNL to form CEES, a new group focused on developing and applying advanced simulation tools to applications, such as nuclear energy and electrical energy storage. He is serving as the ORNL lead for the recently announced High Performance Computing for Manufacturing (HPC4Mfg) program. Launched by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Office, HPC4Mfg is applying HPC expertise and technology to industry challenges in manufacturing in order to optimize processes and reduce energy consumption.
He received a doctorate in computer science at the University of Tennessee in 2009, master’s in computer systems and software design, and his bachelor’s with a double major in computer science and mathematics with physics from Jacksonville State University. His research spans government-scale database and management systems, graphical user interface design, medical software used for surgery, gesture recognition, graph-theoretic analysis, optimization, automation, systems genetic research, magnetic resonance imaging, image processing, artificial intelligence, supercomputing, and energy-efficient buildings. He currently serves at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Building Technologies Research & Integration Center (BTRIC) as a subprogram manager for software tools and models with oversight of projects, involving websites, web services, databases, simulation engine development, visual analytics, supercomputing, and artificial intelligence. He has lead creation of the world’s most accurate method for calibrating a simulation model to measured data, fastest building model creator, fastest buildings simulator, and largest archive of simulated building data. He is a joint faculty member at the University of Tennessee’s Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, and an active member of American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
His research interest is focused on the study of processing, microstructure, and properties of a wide range of metallic alloys used at high temperatures in automotive, industrial, and nuclear applications. He’s active in the study of materials, such as cast irons, stainless steels, and Ni-based alloys used in various applications, including gasoline and diesel engines and exhaust systems, industrial and chemical processing equipment, and high temperature heat exchangers in nuclear reactors. He also has research experience in electronic materials, MEMS devices, and sensors with hands-on experience in failure analysis of microelectronic devices and packages. He has more than 11 issued patents, four R&D 100 awards in collaboration with various industrial partners, and one award for excellence in technology transfer, South East Region Federal Laboratory Consortium.
His research spans battery research, protonic conductors, and fuel cells. He supervises the daily operation of the Battery Manufacturing Facility (BMF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). His recent work at ORNL focuses on material processing and characterization, roll-to-roll manufacturing, electrode engineering, and cell manufacturing for low-cost, high energy and power density lithium-ion batteries with long calendar life. He developed novel techniques for electrode manufacturing, such as aqueous processing and electron beam curing, to reduce processing cost and environmental effect. He also developed several techniques for quality control to reduce scrape rate in cell manufacturing. He holds a doctorate degree from University of Florida and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from University of Science and Technology of China. All are in materials science and engineering.
His research focuses on experimental and analytical studies to improve the energy performance of building envelopes, equipment, and systems. Some of his recent work at Oak Ridge National Laboratory includes energy efficiency enhancement of Army huts, thermal performance evaluation of various radiant barrier systems, lifetime energy and environmental impact of building insulation materials, identify and evaluate performance of lower-global warming potential alternative refrigerants for various applications and operating conditions, study suitability of procedures for evaluating performance of appliances and heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, and performance evaluation of thermochromic and electrochromic paints for buildings applications. He is also developing web-based energy-savings calculation to estimate energy and cost savings potential from improving building envelope airtightness. He earned a master’s and doctorate in mechanical engineering from Iowa State University. He is an American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) certified Building Energy Modeling Professional (BEMP) and member of ASHRAE, American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Tau Beta Pi.
He is the leader of the Scattering and Thermophysics Group as well as a senior research staff member in the Materials Science and Technology Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). He graduated with a bachelor’s in ceramic engineering from Alfred University, and master’s and doctorate in ceramic science from Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include residual stresses, X-ray and neutron diffraction, and mechanical properties of materials.
He is a research and development (R&D) staff member in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Building Technology Research and integration Center (BTRIC) with more than 20 years of experience in the field of building energy performance. He is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Accredited Professional Building Design + Construction (BD+C) and National Fenestration Rating Council (NFRC) certified simulator, and has actively participated in several LEED and sustainability projects and contributed significantly in building energy software product developments. In recent years, his focus is on fenestration research, module development for EnergyPlus, whole building energy simulation, manual and auto calibration, industrial energy data analysis for energy savings impact, building energy monitoring and performance analysis, and the evaluation and integration of energy efficient technologies in buildings. He currently serves on the NFRC Board of Directors.
He completed his academic education at the University of Genoa in Genoa, Italy (bachelor’s and master’s in electronics engineering and a doctorate in electrical engineering) then awarded a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) fellowship for a post-doctoral appointment at the University of California at Berkeley in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. He conducted research in support of the U.S. Department of Energy fusion program starting at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and at Science Application International Corporation, involved in modeling and simulation and high-performance computing. He then worked at the NASA Johnson Space Center in the Shuttle, Constellation, and International Space Station programs focusing on both hardware and software research and development (R&D) in plasma propulsion, electromagnetic compatibility, and space power systems. During that time, he also developed academic liaisons at University of Houston - Clear Lake as an adjunct professor then research assistant professor in the Physics Department. He also served as a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute in the Power Delivery and Utilization sector, and as chief scientist at NPL Associates Inc., a small firm focused in plasma and nuclear technologies. More recently, he joined the senior R&D staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the Electrical and Electronics Systems Research Division.
He is a distinguished research staff member and a group leader of Materials Chemistry at the Chemical Sciences Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a Distinguished UT-Battelle Inventor at ORNL, and fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Ceramic Society, ASM International and the Institute of Physics, London. Since 2010, he has served as a joint faculty appointment as a professor with the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Bredesen Center. His research spans superconductivity, solar cells, batteries, permanent magnets, geothermal lithium extraction, polymer composites and scintillators. He was named the Lockheed-Martin scientist of the year in 1997. He has authored or co-authored more than 400 journal publications and issued 31 U.S. patents related to superconductivity, energy storage, and solar cells. He has commercialized and licensed his technologies to six companies. He has won several awards, including U.S. Department of Energy outstanding mentor awards, five R&D 100 Awards, and three National and two Regional Federal Laboratory Consortium (FLC) Awards. His current research focuses on the development of scintillators for neutron detection, radiation resistant polymer composites, critical materials research including additive manufacturing of permanent magnets, lithium separation from geothermal brine, and energy storage materials.
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