Cherokee Farm | Leadership

Cherokee Farm: The Innovation Campus

David Millhorn, Executive Vice President
The University of Tennessee

David Millhorn is University of Tennessee executive vice president, serving as the chief operating officer of the University’s four campuses and three statewide institutes. He also continues as UT vice president for research and economic development.

He joined UT in 2005 as vice president for research, overseeing the management of science and technology programs at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the research and economic development programs for the UT system. He became executive vice president in early 2007.

Before coming to UT, Millhorn served the University of Cincinnati as the inaugural director of its Genome Research Institute and chairman of its Department of Genome Science. He is a member of the American Physiological Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Society for Neuroscience, and the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Millhorn holds the bachelor’s degree from UT Chattanooga and the Ph.D. from Ohio State University. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physiology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Thomas Zacharia, Deputy Director for Science and Technology
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Dr. Zacharia oversees one of the nation’s largest research and development programs, with annual expenditures of $1.3 billion in materials and physical sciences, energy and engineering sciences, computing and computational sciences, life and environmental sciences, neutron sciences, and national security.

Prior to his present appointment, he served as Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s associate laboratory director for computing and computational sciences from 2001 to 2009. In this capacity, he organized and built a computing directorate with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Defense (DOD). In 2004, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham awarded the National Leadership Computing Facility to a world-class team led by Zacharia, to “Deliver major research breakthroughs, significant technological innovations, medical and health advances, enhanced economic competitiveness, and improved quality of life for the American people.”

Dr. Zacharia has done a remarkable job of building ORNL’s computational program into one of the world’s best. He is a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. As professor and PI, Zacharia successfully led the proposal to establish the National Institute for Computational Sciences (NICS) through a $65M grant from the NSF, the largest award by the NSF to the State of Tennessee.

Dr. Zacharia joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 1987 as a postdoctoral researcher in the Metals and Ceramics Division. He founded the Materials Modeling and Simulation Group and served as group leader until 1998, when he became the division director of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division. From 2000-2001, he was Deputy Associate Laboratory Director for High Performance Computing, and then was named Associate Laboratory Director for the newly formed Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate. Dr. Zacharia holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Regional Technical College in Karnataka, India, an M.S. in materials science from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, Mississippi, and a Ph.D. in engineering science from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. He holds two U.S. patents and is author or co-author of more than 100 publications on high-performance computing for manufacturing processes.

Dr. Zacharia is a Fellow of the American Welding Society. He is the recipient of several scientific and technical awards, including the A. F. Davis Silver Medal Award and two William Spraragen Awards from the American Welding Society; the Champion H. Mathewson Co-Author Citation Award from the American Society for Metals; and three ORNL Technical Achievement Awards. He is also the recipient of a number of leadership awards, including the 2001 ORNL Leader of the Year Award.

Zacharia serves as a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Science Advisory Board, the DOE’s Advanced Scientific Computing Advisory Committee, the NSF’s Advisory Committee for Cyberinfrastructure, and the High Performance Computing Advisory Board of the Council on Competitiveness. He also serves on the advisory board of the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the research center at Julich, in Germany, and is a member of the High End Computing steering committee of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, in the United Kingdom.

Joseph DiPietro, President, The University of Tennessee

Dr. Joe DiPietro was elected the 24th president of the University of Tennessee by the Board of Trustees on Oct. 22, 2010. He officially took over the position from Interim President Jan Simek on Jan. 1, 2011.

As president, Dr. DiPietro serves as the chief executive officer of a statewide university system that includes the flagship campus in Knoxville, campuses in Chattanooga and Martin, the Health Science Center in Memphis, the Space Institute in Tullahoma, and statewide institutes of agriculture and public service.

The president also serves as chairman of the Board of Governors of UT-Battelle, which manages Oak Ridge National Laboratory for the Department of Energy, and as a member of the University of Tennessee Board of Trustees.

Prior to becoming president, Dr. DiPietro served as chancellor of the UT Institute of Agriculture from 2006 to 2010. The title of that position was changed from vice president to chancellor in July 2010. As chancellor, Dr. DiPietro oversaw UT Extension, AgResearch, the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources and the College of Veterinary Medicine. During his tenure, the institute began interdisciplinary programs such as the Center for Renewable Carbon, the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative and the master's degree in landscape architecture. Between 2006 and 2010, external grant support for the Institute of Agriculture increased 30 percent from $26.6 million to $34.8 million annually.

A veterinarian by training, Dr. DiPietro's research emphasis was veterinary parasitology. He earned his bachelor's, doctor of veterinary medicine and master's degrees at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Before coming to UT, Dr. DiPietro served as dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Florida from 1997 to 2006. He rose to tenured professor of veterinary clinical medicine and veterinary pathobiology at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and held administrative positions there including assistant director of the Agriculture Experiment Station and associate dean for research of the College of Veterinary Medicine.

Dr. DiPietro and his wife, Deb, live in Knoxville and have three children and six grandchildren.

Jimmy G. Cheek, Chancellor
The University of Tennessee Knoxville

Jimmy Cheek arrived on the Knoxville campus in February 2009 after a 33-year career at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Cheek is a native Texan who holds a bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M and a master’s degree from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. He also holds a doctorate in interdisciplinary education from Texas A&M.

Before he became Chancellor of UT-Knoxville, he was the Senior Vice President for Agriculture and Natural Resources for the University of Florida, holding that post since 2005. His role as Senior Vice President involved managing the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences which includes: the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, the School of Natural Resources and the Environment, the School of Forest Resources and Conservation, elements of the College of Veterinary Medicine, the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station, 13 research and education centers throughout Florida and the Florida Cooperative Extension Service.

From 1999 to 2004, he was the Dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, working as the Assistant Dean the seven years prior to becoming dean.

Most of Cheek’s research during his career has focused on education and learning, and he has been published more than 80 times. He has received many education awards, including Teacher of the Year for the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and in 2006, he endowed an award for outstanding graduate students in the college.

Jeff Smith, Deputy Director of Operations
Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Jeff Smith coordinates overall operations and support functions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory: facilities operations; environment, safety, and health; business operations; security; human resources; communications; and technology transfer. In concert with the Deputy Director of Science and Technology, he supports the Laboratory Director in the planning, integration, and execution of Laboratory-level initiatives.

While at ORNL, Mr. Smith has led a $300 million modernization project that has given rise to more new construction at the Laboratory at any time since the Manhattan Project. Under Mr. Smith’s leadership, UT-Battelle has used partnerships with the State of Tennessee, private-sector financing, and innovative approaches to using federal resources to transform ORNL. In support of this transformation, Mr. Smith serves as the president of UT-Battelle Development Company, a special-purpose entity established for the purpose of developing privately constructed facilities to be used to meet the needs of the federal government.

A native of Logan, Ohio, Mr. Smith graduated from The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, with a bachelor’s degree in ceramic engineering. Before coming to ORNL, he was Deputy for Operations at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, acting as principal advisor to the Laboratory Director on operational matters. He previously served as the Quality Director at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, leading the development of several laboratory management approaches that continue to serve Battelle and the laboratories that it manages today.

Mr. Smith served on the White House Transition Planning Office responsible for creating the Department of Homeland Security. In addition, he has served on several Battelle acquisition efforts, supporting successful proposals by Battelle and its partners to manage the Brookhaven National Laboratory, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and most recently the Idaho National Laboratory. He has also served on the National Laboratory Improvement Council and numerous ad hoc groups sponsored by the Department of Energy to address operational challenges facing the Department and its laboratories.