JDG completes search for Oak Ridge National Lab’s UT-ORII Executive Director

JDG and ORNL are pleased to annouce that David Sholl has been named the executive director of the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UT-ORII) and vice provost of University of Tennessee, Knoxville, after serving as the institute’s interim leader since June 2023.

Per UT-ORII’s website, under Sholl’s leadership over the past 9 months, UT-ORII has added two new $20 million UT-ORNL convergent research initiatives and expedited plans to recruit more than 100 new UT and ORNL joint research faculty and 500 research graduate students by 2030, two years ahead of schedule.

Sholl joined ORNL three years ago to lead the laboratory’s Transformational Decarbonization Initiative to bring together the lab’s science capabilities and expertise to advance development and deployment of decarbonization solutions for the nation’s energy system. Last year, Sholl was also chosen to lead DOE’s new Energy Earthshot Research Center at ORNL, aimed at reducing industrial emissions through more sustainable chemical processes. Earlier this year, Sholl was recognized with one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer with his election to the National Academy of Engineering.

Sholl served 15 years as a professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, including eight years as that program’s school chair, and 10 years on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University.

He held postdoctoral appointments at Pennsylvania State and Yale University. Sholl has served as the research and thesis advisor to more than 80 students at the bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral levels.