Jeremy Busby

Associate Laboratory Director for Isotope Science and Engineering

Dr. Busby is the Associate Laboratory Director for the Isotope Science and Engineering Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His technical contributions range from light water reactors to sodium reactors and space reactor systems as well as research in support of the ITER project.

Dr. Busby’s research has focused primarily on materials performance and development of materials for nuclear reactor applications. Over the course of his career, Dr. Busby has participated in materials research for space reactors, fusion machines, advanced fast reactors (including sodium, salt, and gas designs), and light water reactors.

In 2011, he was tasked with helping coordinate DOE’s response to the events at the Fukushima nuclear facility. In this role, he helped coordinate analysis coming from the US national laboratories and universities. This data and analysis were integrated with work from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, US industry partners, and most importantly, with colleagues in Japan.  Dr. Busby was awarded a Secretary of Energy Achievement Awards for “contributions to DOE’s response to Fukushima” in 2011.

Dr. Busby was the lead for the Materials Aging and Degradation Pathway for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Nuclear Energy’s Light Water Reactor Sustainability Research and Development program from 2009 to 2015.   In 2015, Dr. Busby became ORNL’s Director for the Materials Science and Technology Division, which is one of the largest organizations dedicated to materials research, both basic and applied.  From 2019 to 2022, he served as Division Director for the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division at ORNL and was named Associate Laboratory Director for Fusion and Fission Energy Sciences Directorate in 2022.

The American Nuclear Society presented Dr. Busby with the Landis Young Member Achievement award in 2006 and, in 2007 he received the ORNL Early Career Award for Engineering Accomplishment for his leadership in the cast stainless steel effort.   In 2019, he was named as a Fellow of the American Nuclear Society.   He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Radiological Sciences at the University of Michigan and has developed and taught his own graduate level course in materials degradation and performance for fission and fusion reactors.   He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Materials Science at Virginia Tech.