"We’re at a very exciting phase of this partnership, and we fully expect to realize an amplification in innovation, education and workforce in the coming years."
— ORNL Deputy for Science and Technology Susan Hubbard
The University of Tennessee and ORNL do together what neither could do alone
In October 1945, just weeks after World War II ended, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, offered two graduate physics courses on site at Clinton Laboratories, as Oak Ridge National Laboratory was originally known.
Theoretical Physics 511 and Atomic Physics 411 had just 48 students between them, but they marked the beginning of a symbiosis between the lab and the university that has lasted nearly eight decades and continues to gain strength.
In that time, the two institutions have shared staff, students and research facilities. They have collaborated on institutes and centers designed to strengthen both their research and their ability to attract exceptional researchers and students. They have created prestigious programs that attract leaders in their fields from across the world. And in 2000, they deepened their relationship when the UT System partnered with Ohio-based Battelle Memorial Institute to become ORNL’s managing contractor.
The long partnership has led to scientific discoveries and impact that could not have been accomplished by either institution alone.
Fast forward to 2021, when UT and ORNL supercharged their relationship with creation of the UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute, or UT-ORII. According to ORNL Deputy for Science and Technology Susan Hubbard, UT-ORII goes beyond collecting existing collaborations under one umbrella.
“UT-ORII aims to develop a new paradigm for innovation on cutting-edge topics that require multi-disciplinary team-based research paired with world-leading facilities — as well as education and workforce development — through melding select strengths across all the UT System institutions with those at ORNL,” she said.
To address these goals, the institute will bump the number of joint faculty by over 100 and the annual number of joint grad students to 500.
“I would say that the global purpose of UT-ORII is to elevate the status and the mission of both institutions,” said David Sholl, the institute’s director. “And it's to recognize that the university has some very special attributes, ORNL has some unique world-leading attributes. And so it makes sense to look at how we can combine those things together."
Scientists sans degrees
In those early days, though, the relationship was driven by both practical considerations and an existential threat.
On the practical side, Oak Ridge had a Ph.D. problem. The lab had been created just two years before as part of the Manhattan Project’s mission to create the world’s first nuclear weapons, and many of its researchers lacked graduate degrees. The war had put their educations on hold, and if they couldn’t continue those educations locally, they would have to continue them elsewhere. UT, on the other hand, was looking for a partner to help expand its science offerings.
— Former ORNL and UT official Lee Riedinger
“In 1940, Oak Ridge did not exist, and UT had no Ph.D. programs,” said Lee Riedinger, who retired in 2018 after serving in key positions at both institutions. “The reason UT opened its first Ph.D. programs in chemistry and physics was because of Oak Ridge. Oak Ridge needed courses taught here so that their valued researchers could work toward Ph.D.s here instead of going back to wherever they came from for the Manhattan Project.”
On the existential side, it was unclear whether the Oak Ridge lab would survive the peace. It had accomplished its Manhattan Project mission — to demonstrate a process for enriching the fissionable isotope plutonium-239 — and its fate was in the hands of the federal government.
One of the lab’s skeptics was none other than J. Robert Oppenheimer, known as the “father of the atomic bomb.” In their book “Atomic Shield: A History of the Atomic Energy Commission,” Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan highlight deliberations of the agency’s General Advisory Committee concerning the lab in 1947 and share Oppenheimer’s communication with the committee:
“The future of the Clinton Laboratories at Oak Ridge was much less clear [than that of other facilities]. The General Advisory Committee had concluded the laboratory was not worth saving. As Oppenheimer had told the Commissioners on March 30, ‘Most of us think that the evidence is in that Clinton will not live even if it is built up.’”
Part of the calculus to change their minds and keep the lab open, Riedinger said, was to stress its value to the nearby university. Key voices supporting the lab came from UT, notably William Pollard and Kenneth Hertel from the university’s Physics Department. They especially wanted to ensure that the lab’s Graphite Reactor — the world’s first continuously operating nuclear reactor — and its supporting facilities were around to benefit Southern universities.
“These universities generally lagged far behind top universities in other parts of the country in research and graduate education,” Riedinger explained. “Pollard and Hertel’s lobbying effort worked, and the U.S. government decided to keep the Oak Ridge laboratory open and to allow the formation of an official university presence at or near these facilities in Oak Ridge.”
He said another boost came from physicist Katharine Way, who in 1945 was the first to suggest a collaboration between the lab and universities across the region. Way left a UT professorship in 1942 to work in the war effort and on the world’s first nuclear reactor, a temporary project in Chicago at the Metallurgical Laboratory, which would later become Argonne National Laboratory. At the Met Lab, she collaborated with two giants in ORNL’s history: future Nobelist Eugene Wigner, who would become the lab’s first director of research and development, and Alvin Weinberg, who would become ORNL’s longest-serving laboratory director.
Way returned to East Tennessee after the war, but she landed in Oak Ridge rather than at UT.
“There was a dinner to welcome her back in Knoxville,” Riedinger said, “hosted by a guy in chemical engineering. And Kay Way said ‘I’ve heard of universities around Chicago teaming together to try to leverage the coming Argonne National Lab. You should do something here in the Southeast.’”
That suggestion led the following year to formation of the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, whose charter members included 14 universities from Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee and Washington, D.C. In 1966 ORINS became Oak Ridge Associated Universities, which now counts more than 150 universities among its members.
Managing a national lab
Perhaps the strongest current link between the two institutions can be found in UT-Battelle, ORNL’s management and operating contractor since April 2000.
According to Riedinger, UT and state officials saw an opportunity to reinforce the relationship when DOE announced in 1995 that it was separating the ORNL contract from that of DOE’s other Oak Ridge facilities — the Y-12 National Security Complex, a nuclear weapons plant, and East Tennessee Technology Park, formerly the K-25 uranium enrichment plant. They had decided against competing for the contract in the early 1980s, but the opportunity seemed much more attractive when it reappeared in 1998.
“We were not ready in ’84, but by ’98 they had split the contracts,” Riedinger said. “And we needed to compete to ensure that we would have a seat at the table and that our joint programs would continue, because the joint programs were so important to us.”
Deborah Crawford, UT’s vice chancellor for research, innovation and economic development, agrees that UT-Battelle reinforces the bond between UT and ORNL.
“It definitely strengthens the relationship,” she said, “and encourages the state to make investments in a partnership that benefits many Tennessee communities, from children in our pre-K-12 schools through high-growth companies that promise economic opportunities for working Tennesseans. It also builds more connectivity at leadership levels.”
That connection, she said, helps guarantee the success of ongoing initiatives such as UT-ORII.
“The president of the UT System, Randy Boyd, has a leadership role in UT-Battelle’s management of the lab, and that helps solidify the long-term support that is necessary for an initiative like UT-ORII, because it truly is a long-term proposition to achieve the ambitious shared vision that we have for UT-ORII.”
The strength of that connection has also helped in recruiting leading scientists, said Brian Wirth, the Governor’s Chair for Computational Nuclear Engineering, who came to Tennessee from the University of California, Berkeley.
“The thing that really attracted me to this position was actually the close relationship that the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Lab had through the UT-Battelle contract,” he said. “In areas where the Oak Ridge National Lab and University of Tennessee missions overlap, it’s really been game changing in terms of recruiting some really stellar faculty that have made significant contributions.”
A good relationship for both the UT System and ORNL
Like any successful relationship, the UT-ORNL collaboration benefits everyone involved. Staff and students across the UT System get access to the lab’s talent pool, are exposed to world-leading experimental facilities, and are closer to the DOE mission and programs. ORNL gets access to UT’s talented researchers and grad students, as well as economic support from the state. The state finds itself with powerful research infrastructure and expertise that is critical for enhancing economic development. And both institutions become more attractive to incoming staff and students.
“Some UT departments recruit very talented graduate students because of the relationship with Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” said UT materials scientist Phillip Rack. Rack is an ORNL alum who served as UT-ORII’s interim education director from 2022 through the summer of 2023.
“I had a joint appointment at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences for 16 years. And you better believe, when I brought a student to campus, we went over to CNMS and they spent an afternoon over there, looking at the equipment, talking with staff, and realizing the opportunity that presented itself.”
On the flip side, researchers coming to ORNL have the advantage of teaching and working with students, and in some cases, being joint faculty.
“We consider primary advisor privileges as being a great honor to bestow on a scientist who isn't a tenure-line faculty member,” Crawford said. “The Joint Faculty program allows lab scientists to serve as primary advisors for UT graduate students and to be the most significant mentor for them throughout their graduate education programs. Researchers who might otherwise aspire to careers in academia will come to the lab recognizing they can get the best of both worlds through a joint faculty appointment.”
Looking to the next 80 years
The last eight decades have shown that UT — Tennessee’s flagship university system — and ORNL — the country’s largest science and energy laboratory — can accomplish great things when they work together. Starting with those two physics courses in 1945, the two institutions have expanded their collaboration into a range of critical research areas and created a unique learning environment for Tennessee students. Looking to the future, the collaboration — led by UT-ORII with initial support from the Department of Energy and the state of Tennessee — promises to deliver needed scientific and technological breakthroughs while providing unique opportunities for students and workforce development.
“We’re at a very exciting phase of this partnership,” Hubbard said, “and we fully expect to realize an amplification in innovation, education and workforce in the coming years, which will yield great impacts to the state and the nation.”
