New director is old hand at Oak Ridge

Oak Ridge National Laboratory has announced that deputy director Thomas Zacharia will move up to the lab’s top job.

Director Thom Mason said in February that he was leaving ORNL after 10 years as director. Mason made his reputation at the lab for successfully overseeing several major projects, including a particle accelerator and two supercomputers.

He is taking a job at the Battelle Memorial Institute, a not-for-profit organisation that manages seven national laboratories, including ORNL, alongside other government research infrastructure.