Evolution of the UT–Oak Ridge partnership
Lee Riedinger, Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee and Emeritus Director of the Bredesen Center
Abstract
In 1940 Oak Ridge did not exist and the University of Tennessee had no Ph.D. programs. Much has changed in the last 80 years as UT and the federal facilities in Oak Ridge have grown enormously, and in many examples, jointly. The UT partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory is unique in the country. I will present highlights of the history of the UT partnership with ORNL and the Oak Ridge Y-12 National Security Complex, as well as insights on the benefits that have come to each institution. This topic is explored in detail in a new book released this summer by UT Press: Critical Connections: The University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge from the Dawn of the Atomic Age to the Present by Lee Riedinger, Al Ekkebus, Ray Smith, and William Bugg.
Dr. Lee Riedinger recently retired as the founding director of the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, now called the University of Tennessee–Oak Ridge Institute for Innovation’s Bredesen Center. It was created to meet workforce needs for an emerging field of energy science. A native of Kentucky and graduate of Thomas More College, Dr. Riedinger earned his Ph.D. in physics from Vanderbilt University in 1968 after spending two years working on dissertation research at ORNL. He joined the UT Physics faculty in 1971 and served there until his retirement in 2019. His field is experimental nuclear physics, and he led many experiments at accelerators at ORNL and other labs in the U.S. and Europe. He was the UT vice chancellor for research three different times and directed the UT-ORNL Science Alliance in the 1980s. In 1983-84, he was the science advisor to Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, who was then the majority leader of the U.S. Senate.
Dr. Riedinger was one of the leaders of the initiative at UT to team with Battelle and bid on the contract to manage ORNL. As a result of the successful bid, UT-Battelle LLC has managed ORNL for the Department of Energy since 2000. He served on this management team from 2000 to 2006, the first four years as the deputy director for science and technology. He returned to UT in 2006 and started in 2010 the Bredesen Center and its two new interdisciplinary Ph.D. programs, which he directed until his retirement. He is coauthor of a book about the history of the UT-Oak Ridge partnership.