In announcing the appointment, Gil Gilliland, associate laboratory director for Energy and Engineering Sciences, said Hill "will bring key strategic and scientific leadership to ORNL's nuclear research and technology programs."
Hill comes to Oak Ridge from Argonne National Laboratory, where he served as deputy associate laboratory director for Engineering Research. In this capacity, he was the principal business development manager of the nuclear energy program. Hill previously held positions at Argonne as director, Reactor Analysis and Engineering Division; director, Reactor Engineering Division; and director, International Nuclear Safety Center.
Before joining Argonne in 1984, Hill had worked with the laboratory to manage a large U.S./United Kingdom experimental program on reactor safety as part of his job with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority in Dorset, U.K.
While at Argonne, Hill received the University of Chicago Award for Distinguished Performance and the Laboratory Director's Award. He served as chair of ANL's Nuclear Safety Review Committee, charged with advising the laboratory director on the safety of all nuclear facilities. He also served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences panel on Digital Instrumentation and Control in the Nuclear Industry.
Hill is an internationally acknowledged expert in nuclear reactor and fuel cycle issues and has extensive experience in international nuclear matters, with both the countries of Western Europe and of the former Soviet Union. He represents the U.S. government as a member of the Nuclear Safety Advisory Group for the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization and is the chair of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Nuclear Energy Agency Science Committee's Working Party on Partitioning and Transmutation. Hill also was a member of the DOE delegation for negotiations with the Russian Federation on Proliferation Resistant Fuel Cycle Technologies.
He received a B.S. in mathematics and a Ph.D. in mathematical physics from Imperial Colleges of Science and Technology, London University. Hill was the recipient of a Science Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Southampton, where he conducted research in semiconductor physics. He also received an MBA from the University of Chicago.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory is a multiprogram research facility managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy.