Governor's Chairs
The State of Tennessee is investing funds to recruit and support approximately 20 exceptionally accomplished researchers who will have joint appointments as tenured professors at the University of Tennessee (UT) and distinguished research staff at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL).
This Governor’s Chair (GC) program seeks to catalyze the development of cutting edge research under the auspices of four joint institutes between the UT and the ORNL: Biological Sciences, Computational Sciences, Neutron Sciences, and Advanced Materials Sciences. The GC appointments include an ongoing discretionary research fund equal to twelve months salary.
There are immediate openings for Governor’s Chairs in the following areas:
- Microbiology, microbial physiology and genomics, understanding the dynamics of microbial communities, with emphasis on those microbial systems relevant to applications in bio-energy and in ecosystem dynamics.
- Plant Biology, plant genomics, genetics and biochemistry of photosynthesis, disease resistance, plant-microbe interactions, biomass production.
- Molecular Biophysics, cellular and molecular imaging, nano-bio interfaces and molecular machines, understanding and predicting protein structure and dynamics and macromolecular interactions.
- Mouse Genetics and Genomics, the mouse as a model organism for a wide variety of physiological and developmental processes, with an emphasis on study and genetic dissection of complex traits.
- Advanced Materials
- Transport and Functionality in Complex and/or Nanostructured Materials
- Modeling and Simulation of Nano-scale Materials
- Controlled Synthesis and Directed Assembly
- [more about these positions]
- Computational Sciences
- Computational science at the petascale in the physical, biological, and environmental sciences
- Algorithms, methods, and libraries
- Component-based, petascale program development and tools
- Systems software that scale to hundreds-of-thousands of processors
- Scalable systems for moving, storing, and analyzing data
- [more about these positions]
UT and ORNL have strong research efforts in these areas. The research environment favors cross-disciplinary cutting-edge efforts that leverage special facilities in the physical and computational sciences.
World-class research facilities include a modern SPF rodent facility with capacity of up to 70,000 animals, leading microbial genomics capabilities, state-of-the-art plant biology facilities, leading biological mass spectrometry capabilities, world-class bioinformatics and computational biology, high-performance computing systems, and the Spallation Neutron Source, a $1.4-billion federally-funded user facility on schedule for completion in 2006, that will provide the world’s most intense neutron beams.
Scientists and Engineers at ORNL and UT conduct basic and applied research and development to create scientific knowledge and technological solutions that strengthen the nation’s global competitiveness; train the next generation scientists and engineers; increase the availability of clean, abundant energy; restore and protect the environment; and contribute to national security. UT and ORNL provide an environment that encourages collaborative research and development. UT-Battelle manages and operates ORNL.