Newswise — Terry Brog, the new deputy director for operations at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), brings with him decades of experience in senior leadership, most recently as manager of the Strategic Projects Division within the Facilities and Operations division at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in Richland, Washington.
A.J. Stewart Smith, former Princeton University vice president for PPPL, recruited Smith for the position. Brog said he came to PPPL seeking a new challenge and he is passionate about PPPL’s mission. “The ultimate vision of this laboratory is someday developing fusion energy,” Brog said. “Imagine if we had that capability right now. We’d be out of business but the world would be so much better off.” Brog began work on June 20 as deputy director for operations and chief operating officer of PPPL, overseeing eight departments. He joins Michael Zarnstorff, deputy director for research, as deputy to PPPL Director Stewart Prager. Princeton University manages the Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).
“It’s fantastic that Terry has joined us,” Prager said. “The experience and perspective that he brings from his work at PNNL will be of tremendous benefit to us.”
Prager said the Laboratory was “extraordinarily fortunate” to have John DeLooper, head of Best Practices and Outreach, serve as interim deputy director for operations for seven months. DeLooper filled the vacancy created by the resignation of Adam Cohen, who left PPPL in November to become deputy undersecretary for Science and Energy of the DOE. “We all owe John DeLooper a big debt of gratitude for his tour de force effort during this time,” Prager said.
Learned about national laboratories as a childBrog is the second generation to work at national laboratories. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio, the younger Brog wanted to follow in his father Ken’s footsteps to become a nuclear engineer. He learned about many of the national laboratories when the elder Brog worked at Argonne, Oak Ridge, and Brookhaven national laboratories, as an employee of Battelle Memorial Institute.
Terry Brog was a high school athlete who went on to play football for Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Brog graduated from Kenyon with a bachelor’s degree in physics with honors. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Michigan, receiving dual master’s degrees in metallurgical engineering and nuclear engineering in 1982 and a doctorate in metallurgical engineering in 1986.
He started his professional career with a position working for Champion Spark Plug, then located in Toledo, Ohio. He went on to work at Coors Ceramics Co. (now CoorsTek) in Golden, Colorado, and other Colorado and California technology companies.
Leadership positions at several companiesBrog has held positions in operations, project development, research and development management, and fiscal management in several companies. He helped lead Nytrox Systems Inc., a Boulder City, Nevada, company, out of bankruptcy as CEO and chairman of the board of directors. He helped double revenue at AlphaTRAC, Inc., a Westminster, Colorado, consulting firm specializing in risk assessment and emergency management. Brog also led the significant increase in both revenue and profitability at Ceramics Processing Technology, Inc. in Oceanside, California
Brog became the chief operations officer for PNNL’s Energy and Environment Directorate in 2008 and was responsible for operational oversight of this directorate with a staff of 900 people and a budget of $235 million before becoming manager of the Strategic Projects division. In addition to his PNNL duties, Brog was also chair of the Operations Committee for Brookhaven National Laboratory and a Battelle/Stony Brook board member.
Brog and his wife, Jill, hold local board positions with several charitable organizations, including The Children’s Reading Foundation, The Boys & Girls Club, March of Dimes, and Catholic Families. They have two grown sons who work in the finance industry.
PPPL's new deputy director for operations takes seriously the trust that the public has put in PPPL as a national laboratory. “We have the opportunity to impact everybody every day across the United States, and the world,” he said. “We really are quite fortunate. Who wouldn’t want to do that?”
PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas — ultra-hot, charged gases — and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. Results of PPPL research have ranged from a portable nuclear materials detector for anti-terrorist use to universally employed computer codes for analyzing and predicting the outcome of fusion experiments. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, which is the largest single 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://www.science.energy.gov.
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