August 9, 2011 — Phillip Britt, director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Chemical Sciences Division, and Jimmy Mays, a jointly appointed Distinguished Scientist at ORNL and the University of Tennessee, have been elected to the 2011 class of fellows of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
The ACS Fellows Program recognizes members for their contributions to the chemical sciences and outstanding service to ACS.
Before becoming a division director, Britt worked as the leader of the Macromolecular Complex Systems group at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and in the Physical Organic Chemistry group as a senior R&D staff member.
Britt's honors include an R&D Leadership Director's Level Award in 2010; a Technical Achievement Award in 2000; ORNL Outstanding Publication Award in 1997; and the R.A. Glenn Award from the ACS Division of Fuel Chemistry in 1989 and 1994. He has published and reprinted more than 115 scientific papers and is currently serving as the chair-elect of the East Tennessee section of the American Chemical Society.
Britt lives in Knoxville with his wife, Deborah, and two children.
Mays received his doctorate from the University of Akron in 1984 and began his research at ORNL and UT in 2002. Before his joint appointment, Mays was professor of chemistry at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Mays currently serves on the editorial advisory boards for the Journal of Applied Polymer Science, Polymer Bulletin and the European Polymer Journal. In 2003, Mays received the Arthur K. Doolittle Award of the ACS PMSE Division, and in 2010 he was named Founding Fellow of the ACS Polymer Chemistry Division. Mays's other recent honors include the 2009 ACS Southern Chemist Award, a 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Akron, a 2010 Technology 2020 Inaugural Pathfinder Research Entrepreneur of the Year Award and a 2011 Herman Mark Senior Scholar Award.
Mays lives in Knoxville with his wife, Patricia.
Mays, Britt and the other fellows will be recognized at the ACS National Meeting in Denver, Colo. The full list of 2011 ACS fellows appears the August 2011 issue of Chemical and Engineering News.
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy's Office of Science.