Bredesen Center News http://bredesencenter.utk.edu/news.shtml

04/29/13 - Knoxville News Sentinel - Former governors give practical advice during UT visit

University of Tennessee graduate students got some practical advice for their national energy policy ideas that might be politically unpopular from two former public figures who have governed in the real world. The occasion was Thursday when presentations by a policy studies class in the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education were made to the center’s namesake, former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, acting the role of “president.” Then walked in his friend and “vice president,” former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who’s also been a U.S. secretary of energy and a diplomat. Richardson was in Knoxville as a guest of the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy. Ideas were far-ranging. One group of students proposed having two centralized interim spent nuclear fuel storage installations and funds for research and educating the public on benefits of the nuclear industry. Other groups proposed an increase in the federal tax on gasoline and income tax reductions to mitigate political concerns or tax rebates to mitigate inflation because of transportation cost increases. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/apr/29/georgiana-vines-former-governors-give-practical/ ORNL’s Sustainable Campus Initiative emphasizes sustainability at work, home, and in the community. In celebration of Earth Day, we are pleased to present the fourth annual ORNL Community Sustainability Award. This award honors an ORNL-based individual or team who is making significant contributions to community sustainability at the local, regional, national, or global level. This year’s winner was selected because of his personal commitment and valuable contributions to ensuring the promotion of efficient technologies and biofuel use in the community, at home, and in his research. Scott Curran, who is a member of the Energy and Transportation Science Division, leads by example. He supports the education of students of all ages, spanning primary school through college, on the benefits of alternative fuels and hybrid vehicle technology. Scott works with ORAU/ORISE to host a middle school science camp field trip every summer to the National Transportation Research Center (NTRC) to excite students about the science and engineering behind transportation research. Scott also volunteers as the Outreach Advisor to the University of Tennessee EcoCAR2 Team which is a DOE sponsored hybrid vehicle design competition. Because of Scott’s commitment, East Tennessee is aware of ORNL’s lead-by-example approach to sustainability through the use of alternative fuels and the adoption of fuel efficient advanced vehicle technologies such as hybrid electric vehicles and advanced clean diesel vehicles. For the past five years Scott has participated in every City of Oak Ridge, Knoxville, and ORNL Earth Day events. This includes volunteering his own time to bring alternative fuel vehicles to the events and spending time explaining to attendees the benefits of using alternative fuel vehicles. Scott also works with the local DOE Clean Cities Program year round to make sure the public has access to current and accurate information on the benefits and challenges of alternative fuels and advanced vehicles technologies. http://sustainability-ornl.org/earthday/default.aspx Arrangements are being made for Richardson to meet with former Gov. Phil Bredesen after the luncheon. Bredesen, a Democrat who served 2003-11, will be in Knoxville Thursday for presentations by Ph.D. students in a program at UT’s Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. Lee Riedinger, a physicist who directs the Bredesen Center, said the students are in a program on energy science and engineering that is in its second year. A class, which Riedinger teaches, focuses on energy technology solutions as the world faces problems of expanding population and increasing need for energy. As an end-of-semester project, the class has been divided into six teams to look at energy pricing and policy relative to various energy sources. One person from each group will present a one-page briefing paper and make a seven-minute presentation to Bredesen, who will act the role of U.S. president, Riedinger said. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2013/apr/20/georgiana-vines-bill-richardson-to-lecture-in/ Bredesen Center Director Lee Riedinger was awarded the the L. R. Hesler award in recognition of his outstanding teaching abilities and service to the university community. Also, three Bredesen Center graduate students, Melissa Allen, Kyle Sander, and Stephen Wood, were awarded the Extraordinary Professional Promise award by the Chancellor's office. http://chancellor.utk.edu/honorsbanquet/2013/ Graduate Student Kemper Talley is well aware that the nucleus is not merely a fascinating subatomic model with no connection to the larger world. He works with UT Physics Professor Witek Nazarewicz and Mark Williams of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and his interest lies in building on fundamental science to solve real-world problems, particularly in the field of energy. He'll have the opportunity to expand his computational physics portfolio this summer when he attends the 10-week Computational Physics Student Summer Workshop at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), beginning in June. Among this year's workshop topics are turbulence modeling, algorithms for shock hydrodynamics, and energy minimization for nuclear fission. Talley will receive a generous fellowship from LANL to attend and is one of 24 students accepted to the program following a competitive selection process. http://www.phys.utk.edu/news/2013/news-03012013-talley.html For some 40 years scientists have known that when mercury is released into the environment certain bacteria can transform it into highly toxic methylmercury. Exactly how bacteria make this happen has eluded scientists. The challenge was to find proteins that can transfer a certain type of methyl group and to identify the genes responsible for their production. Ultimately, by combining chemical principles and genome sequences, the team identified two genes, which they named hgcA and hgcB. Researchers experimentally deleted these genes one at a time from two strains of bacteria, which caused the resulting mutants to lose the ability to produce methylmercury. Reinserting these genes restored that capability, thus verifying the discovery. http://www.ornl.gov/info/press_releases/get_press_release.cfm?ReleaseNumber=mr20130207-00 Seven professors have been named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to their 2012 class of fellows. This year, 702 members have been awarded this honor by AAAS because of their scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. The new fellows will be presented with an official certificate February 16 at the AAAS annual meeting in Boston, Massachusetts. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2012/11/29/faculty-named-aaas-fellows/ Physics Professor and Bredesen Center faculty member Witold (Witek) Nazarewicz will need to add another line to his CV this fall, this time to make room for the 2012 Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Distinguished Scientist Award. He will accept the honor at the annual Awards Night celebration on November 16. A nuclear theorist, Nazarewicz is being recognized "for his foundational work in developing and applying nuclear density functional theory, resulting in a comprehensive theoretical framework for the physics of exotic nuclei and tremendous advances in our understanding of them, and for his pivotal role in the promotion of radioactive beam physics in the United States." http://www.phys.utk.edu/news/2012/news_nazarewicz-ornl_10092012.html The university takes seriously its mission of preparing students to transition successfully into the job market, Cheek said, highlighting UT’s relationship with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, student internships with companies, and the mission of the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. “We’re doing big things with our interdisciplinary programs,” he said. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2012/08/02/ut-programs-state-workforce-needs/ Tennessee Solar Conversion and Storage Using Outreach, Research, and Education (TN-SCORE) played a major role in the Tennessee STEM Leadership Academy (TSLA). University of Tennessee, Knoxville TN-SCORE-funded Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research graduate students Stephen Wood, Jason Clement, and Ryan Ginder as well as UTK REU student Evan Ornouski and post-doc Doug Aaron led over 70 middle school science teachers from 53 school districts in three separate energy engineering challenges over the three day event at Oak Ridge Associated University. The students helped develop educational hands-on modules that taught the teachers about microbial fuel cells, wind energy, and solar energy. http://tnepscor.org/Articles/tn-score_students_helping_teach_teachers.aspx Bredesen Center student Charles Chin wins the University of Tennessee Vol Court “Pitch Competition” with energy oriented education videogame idea. http://www.teknovation.biz/2012/03/14/CIRE-student-wins-latest-vol-court-pitch-competition/ ORNL speaks with Bredesen Center graduate student Kemper Talley about his research and the purpose of the Bredesen Center. http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v44_3_11/article10.shtml The UT Board of Trustees voted Friday to rename the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education to the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/10/28/ut-names-interdisciplinary-center-governor-bredesen/ Chancellor Jimmy Cheek gives praise to the Bredesen Center and several Bredesen Center graduate students talk about their exciting research. http://chancellor.utk.edu/newsletter/1011-cire.php CEO of UT-Battelle, the organization that manages ORNL, mentions the Bredesen Center as an example of the region's commitment to creating leaders and innovation in science and engineering. http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/aug/21/innovation-valley-helps-businesses-mine-regions Bredesen Center faculty members Kevin Tomsovic and Yilu Liu are in the spotlight for recieving an $18 million award from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy to establish CURENT, the Center for Ultra-wide-area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/08/17/smart-grid-nsfdoe-award/ This weekend, UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek will join the likes of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in addressing the largest gathering of chief executive officers from universities around the world. The chancellor will be speaking at the International Association of University Presidents (IAUP) Triennial conference, held every three years. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/06/15/chancellor-ceos-cire/ Three graduate students at UT Knoxville are recipients of the 2011 National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students in NSF-supported science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/04/12/students-nsf-fellowship/ This week, prospective students of the inaugural class of the UT-ORNL Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education visited campus. The Bredesen Center will offer one of the country's first interdisciplinary doctoral degrees in energy science and engineering and will train scientists to take on the world's most challenging energy problems by working with teams of researchers making scientific breakthroughs that could become thriving business enterprises. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/03/01/prospective-students-cire-inaugural-class-visit-campus/ UT Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory's new science and energy center has received program approval and named its first set of faculty members. The process for selecting its inaugural class of graduate students is now underway. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/02/22/conference-honors-lee-riedinger/ UT Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory's new science and energy center has received program approval and named its first set of faculty members. The process for selecting its inaugural class of graduate students is now underway. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/02/17/cire-choosing-inaugural-class/ The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is launching the Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, an academic unit that seeks to transform the energy industry in our country and the world, as well as the state and local economies. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2011/02/17/cire/ UT Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have named physics professor Lee Riedinger as director of the UTK/ORNL Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education. http://www.utk.edu/tntoday/2010/08/26/riedinger-cire-director/