Distinguished Staff Fellowship Program

Requisition Id 12281 

Overview:    

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is the world’s premier research institution, empowering leaders and teams to pursue breakthroughs in an environment marked by operational excellence and engagement with the communities where we live and work. ORNL invites you to apply to its Distinguished Staff Fellowship (DSF) Program. The fellowships are awarded to outstanding early-career scientists and engineers with demonstrated success within their academic, professional, and technical areas, who have high potential to be future science leaders. These highly competitive fellowships are available across a variety of research disciplines, including biology and the environment, clean energy, fusion and fission, isotope science, materials science, national security, neutron science, and supercomputing. 

 

As a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science national laboratory, ORNL has an extraordinary 80-year history of solving the nation’s biggest problems. We deliver scientific discoveries and technical breakthroughs needed to realize solutions in energy and national security and provide economic benefit to the nation. We have a dedicated and creative staff of over 6,000 people. Our vision for diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) is to cultivate an environment and practices that foster diversity in ideas and in the people across the organization, as well as to ensure ORNL is recognized as a workplace of choice. 

 

Applicants selected to become DSFs will be named to one of three fellowships based on their scientific background. The fellowships honor three prominent scientists who made a Big Science impact at ORNL. 

 

• Dr. Liane B. Russell was a groundbreaking geneticist at ORNL (1947–2002), and in 1973 she was the first woman to receive the internationally awarded Roentgen Medal. She achieved international recognition for her contributions to our understanding of basic mammalian genetics. Russell Fellows are typically in the biological sciences, biomolecular chemistry, computational biology, and environmental and ecosystem sciences. 

• Dr. Alvin M. Weinberg was a passionate advocate for nuclear energy with a strong interest in science policy and ORNL’s longest serving director (1955–1973). Weinberg Fellows generally align with the applied, experimental, and computational sciences and demonstrate competency in chemistry and chemical engineering, radiochemistry, materials science and engineering, nuclear science and engineering, and manufacturing science and engineering. 

• Dr. Eugene P. Wigner was a 1963 Nobel Laureate in physics and ORNL’s first director of research and development (1946–1947). Wigner Fellows are typically in the fundamental sciences and demonstrate competency in advanced materials, chemistry, computational science, neutron scattering, nuclear physics, and plasma and fusion energy sciences. 

 

Targeted Research Directions 

Candidates should demonstrate their ability to contribute to one (or more) of the following cross-disciplinary research initiatives:  

 

• Scale computing and data analytics to exascale and beyond for science and energy 

• Deliver transformational R&D to enable integrated energy systems and advancements in manufacturing   

• Discover and design next-generation materials, and chemical processes for energy 

• Advance the impact and application of neutron science 

• Understand complexity in biological and environmental systems 

• Provide strategic capabilities in isotope R&D and production 

• Achieve breakthroughs in nuclear science, technologies, and systems focusing on fusion and fission 

• Deliver science and technology to address complex national security challenges in cyber resilience and intelligence, geospatial sciences and human security, and nuclear nonproliferation 

• Elucidate the principles of fundamental physics and particle interactions 

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities:   

DSFs are expected to conduct scientific research of the highest quality and impact during their 3