Election of Fellows in the AAAS in 1997 was limited to 270 of the 140,000 members. This honor recognizes the outstanding contributions Mulholland has made to science through interdisciplinary research on the ecology and biogeochemistry of stream ecosystems.
Mulholland began as a research associate in 1979 and is now a senior research staff member in the ORNL Environmental Sciences Division. He received his bachelor's degree in civil engineering and his master's degree in environmental engineering from Cornell University. Mulholland holds a doctorate in environmental biology from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
His primary research fields include the ecology of streams, biogeochemistry, land/water interactions in forested catchments, watershed hydrology, wetland ecology and climate-change effects on freshwater ecosystems.
He is a past recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the department of environmental sciences and engineering at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He also holds memberships in the Ecological Society of America, the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Mulholland is an AYSO and SCOR soccer coach and is a basketball coach for the Oak Ridge Boys Club. He lives in Oak Ridge with his wife, Cathey, and three children, Anna, Rick and Joe.
ORNL, one of DOE's multiprogram national research and development facilities, is managed by Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corporation.