News

Originally appeared in November 5, 2007
Knoxville News Sentinel

ORNL computing guru assumes UT vice presidency

by Frank Munger

Thomas Zacharia, the driving force behind Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s rise to international leadership in scientific computing, has been named vice president for science and technology at the University of Tennessee.

He will assume his new role at UT while maintaining his current position as associate lab director at ORNL.

Zacharia already had a faculty appointment as a professor in UT’s electrical engineering department, but university spokeswoman Gina Stafford said he wasn’t financially compensated by UT in that role.

As UT’s vice president for science and technology, he will receive an annual salary of $108,680 from the university, Stafford said. That’s in addition to his ORNL salary, which wasn’t immediately available.

The university and the Oak Ridge lab have a long history of working together, and UT has been a co-manager of ORNL since 2000. UT-Battelle, a partnership with Battelle Memorial Institute, manages ORNL under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.

In a telephone interview today, Zacharia said he will use to his job at UT to broaden the UT-ORNL relationship and help forge more scientific partnerships, using the computational capabilities to strengthen the research in all areas of science.

“It’s a really great opportunity,” Zacharia said. “There aren’t many universities that have such a close relationship with another institution.”

He said he wants the ORNL partnerships to include not only UT’s flagship campus in Knoxville, but also the other campuses across the state.

Zacharia said the timing is perfect for stronger teaming arrangements between UT and ORNL. He pointed to the America Competes Act, which Congress passed earlier this year — establishing a legislative platform for U.S. science budgets to double in years to come.

“I think we are more competitive when we partner together,” he said.

A couple of months ago, Zacharia led a UT team that won a $65 million grant from the National Science Foundation for a new supercomputer that will be capable of 1,000 trillion calculations per second. The grant was reported to be the largest research award in UT’s history.

The new computer will be housed at ORNL in a UT-owned facility, and the Oak Ridge contribution was seen as a major factor in the competition with other universities.

UT President John Petersen, in a prepared statement, said Zacharia’s joint appointment “provides a unique for maximizing the extraordinary assets generated through this partnership.”

UT Executive Vice President David Milhorn added: “Having Dr. Zacharia join UT’s senior leadership will strengthen the university’s goal of becoming a leader in high-performance computing.”

Zacharia said his associate lab directorship at ORNL will continue to his principal appointment. He said nominally would spend three days a week at ORNL and two at UT, although he indicated that two roles overlap in many ways and can’t really be separated.