Miaofang Chi of ORNL named top scientist at UT-Battelle’s Awards Night

Miaofang Chi of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory has earned the ORNL Director’s Award for Outstanding Individual Accomplishment in Science and Technology.

ORNL Director Thom Mason presented the award to Chi on Friday during the annual Awards Night event in Knoxville hosted by UT-Battelle, the management and operating contractor for ORNL.

Chi was honored for her pioneering early career research in analytical electron microscopy. Chi’s research has advanced the understanding of defect and interface chemistry and structure and how such defects control materials properties at the atomic level. Her work includes the recent development of transformative insitu microscopy methods to probe transport phenomena at the atomic scale.

Chi also earned the Early-Career Researcher Award.

Buddy Bland of ORNL’s Center for Computational Sciences earned the Director’s Award for Outstanding Individual Accomplishment in Mission Support for his sustained, outstanding leadership and support of ORNL’s high-performance computing initiatives under the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. Bland, who directs the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility—home of the Titan supercomputer—also earned the Mission Support Leadership, Division Award.

The Director’s Award for Outstanding Team Accomplishment was presented to a mission support team consisting of Chris Patton, Judith Henry, Mike McIntosh, Ann Weaver, Glenn Buckley, and Mike Mitchell. The team was recognized for the successful development and deployment of the Battelle Laboratory Operations Supervisor Academy, or LOSA, at ORNL. LOSA is a key part of the ORNL plan to improve operational performance and safety culture at the laboratory.

Awards Night winners are selected by committees and approved by the laboratory director. Division, program, or directorate managers make nominations. The laboratory director selects the Director’s Awards from Awards Night honorees with input from the deputy directors for science and technology and operations.

The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility are DOE Office of Science User Facilities.

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

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