Paranthaman named top scientist at ORNL's annual Awards Night

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 11, 2019 – Parans Paranthaman, a researcher in Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Physical Sciences Directorate, has received the ORNL Director’s Award for Outstanding Individual Accomplishment in Science and Technology for his efforts in mentoring and developing future scientists.

The Director’s Awards were presented by ORNL Director Thomas Zacharia during Saturday night’s annual Awards Night event hosted by UT-Battelle, the management and operating contractor of ORNL for the Department of Energy.

Paranthaman received the laboratory's top science and technology award "for teaching and mentoring more then 56 undergraduate and graduate students during the past eight years to be their best, strengthen their critical thinking abilities, and develop research skills for success in graduate school and future jobs." He also received the Mentor of Student Researchers award at the ceremony.

Paranthaman, an ORNL Corporate Fellow and leader of the Chemical Sciences Division’s Materials Chemistry group, is a Distinguished UT-Battelle Inventor, 2016 ORNL Inventor of the Year and a UT-ORNL joint faculty member with the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. He is a fellow of several professional societies and holds numerous patents related to superconductivity, energy storage and solar cells.

The Director's Award for mission support went to the Environmental Sciences Division's Colleen Iversen, who also received the Science Communicator award under community engagement. Colleen was recognized "for her numerous contributions to science communication and outreach and her ability to present science in a compelling manner to audiences of all ages."

Iversen is an ecosystem ecologist in the Ecosystem Observations and Experiments group. She works with root-soil interfaces to study how climate change alters belowground carbon and nutrient cycling and was selected last year for the New Voices in Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine project launched by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.

This year's Director’s Award to a team for research accomplishment went to a multidisciplinary group cited for the research accomplishment of "pioneering use of electron microscopy to identify site-specific isotopic labels at nanoscale resolution." The team members are Jordan Hachtel and Juan Carlos Idrobo Tapia of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences' Electron & Atom Probe Microscopy group, Jingsong Huang and Jacek Jakowski of the Computational Sciences & Engineering Division's Chemical & Materials Sciences group, Ilja Popovs of the Chemical Sciences Division's  Nanomaterials Chemistry group, Santa Jansone-Popova of Chemical Sciences Division's Chemical Separations group and Jong Keum of the Neutron Scattering Division's Materials Engineering group.

A Director's Award to a team for mission support went to a group “for exemplary decision making and a well calculated approach that enabled safe resolution of significant hazards at the Tower Shielding Facility in February 2019.” Team members are J.P. Biondo, Darrell Dillinger, Jane Ann Holly, Steve Malone, Gary Sills, Brooks Hamby, Ryan Cranford, Joseph Drumwright, Rusty Friske and Tim Crabtree.

Awards Night honorees are selected by committees and approved by the laboratory director. Nominations are made by division, program or directorate managers. The Director’s Award winners are selected from Awards Night honorees by the laboratory director with input from the deputy for science and technology and the deputy for operations.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The Spallation Neutron Source and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility are DOE Office of Science User Facilities.  DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.