Newswise — OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Nov. 23, 2015 -- The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has named Thomas Zacharia and Mariappan Parans Paranthaman of the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory as new AAAS fellows. The two are honored for their achievements in science administration and materials chemistry, respectively.
Zacharia, ORNL's deputy for science and technology, is cited "for extraordinary contributions to developing and applying forefront computational systems to solve challenging scientific problems, particularly in materials, and for distinguished leadership in research administration."
His term as deputy for science and technology began in 2009, with a three-year interlude as executive vice president of research and development for the Qatar Foundation. Zacharia came to ORNL in 1987 as a postdoctoral researcher and within a few years was leader of the Materials Modeling and Simulation group. He became director of the Computer Science & Mathematics Division in 1998, deputy associate laboratory director for High Performance Computing from 2000 to 2001 and was founding associate laboratory director for the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate in 2001.
Zacharia led the creation of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, home of Titan, currently the world's second fastest supercomputer. He also established the National Institute for Computational Sciences at the University of Tennessee, funded by the National Science Foundation.
Zacharia holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, India, an M.S. in materials science from the University of Mississippi in Oxford and a doctorate in engineering science from Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y. He holds two U.S. patents and is author or co-author of more than 100 publications on materials, manufacturing, computing and energy with an “h-index” of 29 (Google scholar citation). He is a fellow of the American Welding Society and a corresponding member of the International Academy of Aeronautics.
Paranthaman is a distinguished research staff member and leader of the Materials Chemistry group of ORNL's Chemical Sciences Division, and also serves on the faculty for the University of Tennessee's Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. His current research focuses on the critical materials research related to additive manufacturing of permanent magnets and lithium separation from geothermal brine, electrode materials for battery applications, polymer composite films, and synthesis of neutron detectors for the Spallation Neutron Source second target station.
Paranthaman is also a fellow of ASM International, the American Ceramic Society and the Institute of Physics, London, UK. He is cited by the AAAS "for distinguished contributions to the field of chemistry, including materials for superconductors, solar cells, lithium ion batteries and processing of magnetic materials."
He received his doctorate in solid-state chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1988. Paranthaman continued his research career at ORNL after completing his post-doctoral research with Professor John Goodenough at the University of Texas at Austin and Professor Allen Hermann at the University Colorado at Boulder in May 1993. He has authored or co-authored more than 400 publications with an “h-index” of 55 (Google scholar citation) and issued 30 U.S. patents in his area.
Zacharia and Paranthaman will be honored at the professional society's annual meeting in February.
The ORNL Leadership Computing Facility and Spallation Neutron Source are DOE Office of Science User Facilities. UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the DOE's Office of Science. The 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 http://science.energy.gov/.
Thomas Zacharia Image: www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/Zacharia200_0.jpg
Parans Paranthaman Image: www.ornl.gov/sites/default/files/Parans200_0.jpg
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