David Sholl knows the immense value of a major university working in collaboration with a national laboratory. It was one of the biggest attractions for him joining the Oak Ridge National Laboratory three years ago.
Sholl, who has an appointment as joint faculty professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, now has the chance to deepen the bonds even more. After serving as the interim leader for nine months, Sholl was named the executive director of the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute and vice provost of UT.
UT-ORII was launched by UT and ORNL in response to the nation’s need for a stronger pool of STEM talent, and to drive innovation-based economic growth across Tennessee.
“The research initiatives that we’re working on are topics of true national importance where Tennessee can be national leaders,” said Sholl, who also leads ORNL’s Transformational Decarbonization Initiative. “They are topics where the university can’t do it by itself, and ORNL can’t do it by itself. But together, the collective group can work on a much broader set of problems. It’s a very rewarding and productive partnership.”
Sholl came to Tennessee from Georgia Tech, where he was the school chair of chemical & biomolecular engineering from 2013-2021. The Australian is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2024.
Under Sholl’s leadership over the past nine months, UT-ORII has added two new $20-million UT-ORNL convergent research initiatives and expedited plans to recruit more than 100 new UT and ORNL joint research faculty and 500 research graduate students by 2030, two years ahead of schedule.
“On the graduate education piece, it’s a very significant change to the population at UT and a very significant shift at ORNL in terms of how many students are working here,” Sholl said. “We will need to have engagement right across UT and right across ORNL. My hope is that every department in the Tickle College of Engineering will have students participating in this program.”
Expanding His Circle
Sholl is on UT’s campus at least once a week and has enjoyed engaging with all the TCE administrators and department heads.
“I already knew several of them because of my professional connections, but I think people really understand that if we can use this relationship with ORNL correctly, that everybody can benefit from it,” Sholl said. “It’s wonderful for the students. They get exposed to fantastic research. It’s wonderful for faculty and Tickle, because they can expand the sort of breadth of their work and collaborate more fully with scientists at ORNL.”
Sholl obtained his bachelor’s degree in theoretical physics from The Australian National University and his master’s and PhD in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado.
“My wife jokes that there is only one person in our house with an engineering degree and it is her. But when I became a faculty member, I was hired by a chemical engineering department, so I really have embraced that and I now think of myself as a chemical engineer,” Sholl said. “I’ve worked for many years with industrial partners in the chemical industry trying to think about processes that we can do at really large scales that make a difference in the world.”
At every stop in Sholl’s journey, music has remained a central element in his life. He’s played the piano and violin since he was young. During his PhD studies in Boulder, he had a semi-professional violin gig and joined the community orchestra once he moved to Oak Ridge.
“I really, really enjoy it. It’s great to go and do something that requires my focus in a different way, and with a group of people who frankly don’t care that I’m an engineer,” Sholl said. “Just to do something with a community of people is really fun.”
Contact
Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)