Kenneth W. Tobin, Ph.D., ORAU Chief Research and University Partnerships Officer
Abstract
For over 75 years, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) has provided innovative scientific and technical solutions for the U.S. Department of Energy and other federal agencies in support of science, health and education, and STEM workforce development. ORAU is made up of a consortium of PhD-granting universities that goes back to the end of WWII and the Manhattan Project. Today, our consortium has a membership of over 150 universities of which 100 are listed in the NSF Top 200 Universities based on Federal R&D expenditures. By leveraging the capabilities of our ORAU subject matter experts and our university partners, we build strong science and technology teams to solve challenging national problems in worker health and epidemiology, decommissioning health physics, radiation science and dosimetry, atmospheric science, health preparedness, and STEM education and workforce development. Prior to joining ORAU, Dr. Tobin spent over 32 years in research, research leadership, and institutional planning at ORNL. In this talk, he will be reviewing the impact of his ORNL research and his role at ORAU. ORAU helped facilitate the UT-Battelle partnership to manage the lab and continues to serve as part of the UT-Battelle management team today. In fact, all of ORNL’s core universities are members of our ORAU consortium. We continue to work on jointly sponsored workshops, events, and participant programs today that support ORNL’s strong science missions in clean energy, global security, and economic development for the nation.
Biographical Sketch:
Kenneth W. Tobin, Ph.D.
Ken Tobin is the Chief Research and University Partnerships Officer at Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU). In this role he grows ORAU’s research enterprise while expanding partnerships with the over 150 universities that are part of the ORAU consortium, by fostering relationships and business development opportunities with the federal government, national laboratories, and private industry. Prior to this he served in numerous research leadership positions at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) including Director of the Office of Institutional Planning, Director of the Reactor and Nuclear Systems Division, and Director of the Electrical and Electronics Systems Research Division. Dr. Tobin earned his BS in Physics and MS in Nuclear Engineering from Virginia Tech and his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Virginia, where his dissertation contribution was in computational imaging methods for neutron radiography. He has authored and coauthored more than 180 total publications and he holds 15 issued US patents that have been licensed by more than 20 semiconductor device manufacturers as well as patents licensed for use in the field of telemedicine. He is the recipient of numerous awards for his work including the American Telemedical Association Innovation Award, Battelle Memorial Institute Distinguished Inventor, two R&D 100 Awards, nine Federal Laboratory Consortium Awards, and the Tennessee Academy of Science Industrial Scientist of the Year. He was an ORNL Corporate Research Fellow, and is a Fellow of IEEE, SPIE, NAI, and is a member of AAAS.