Oak Ridge Today

DOE Oak Ridge has MLK program Tuesday featuring Beck Center CEO

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Office will hold its annual observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday with a program entitled “Change Starts with Me.” The program is free and open to the public.

This year’s event features a keynote address by Reverend Reneé Kesler. She is the president and chief executive officer of the Beck Cultural Exchange Center Inc. and a licensed ordained associate minister at Mount Calvary Baptist Church. Kesler is also a professional instructor with the University of Tennessee’s Department of Professional and Personal Development in Continuing Education. [Read more…]

President Obama’s trip to East Tennessee explained

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President Barack Obama, Sen. Bob Corker, Sen. Lamar Alexander, and Rep. John Duncan at Air Force One

President Barack Obama, front; U.S. senators Lamar Alexander, second, and Bob Corker, third; and Representative John J. Duncan Jr. arrive at McGhee Tyson Airport in Alcoa on Air Force One at about noon Friday. (Photo by Julio Culiat)

 

Before President Obama landed in East Tennessee on Friday, a spokesman explained the purpose of the trip to reporters. The 5.5-hour visit included stops at Pellissippi State Community College in Hardin Valley and manufacturer Techmer PM in Clinton. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and Congressman John J. Duncan Jr. were guests, and so was Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam.

Eric Schultz, principal deputy press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One that President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden and his wife Jill would unveil the president’s plan to make two years of community college free for all responsible students no matter their age during the East Tennessee trip. It was a preview of a “cornerstone” of the president’s State of the Union to Congress on January 20.

Separately, during a stop in Clinton, the president announced a manufacturing innovation hub that involves the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. [Read more…]

Obama visit spotlights sports car printed by UT engineers at ORNL

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Shelby Cobra 3D Printed Cobra

University of Tennessee engineering students Andrew Messing and Alex Roschli printed this Shelby Cobra at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility. The car was on stage during President Obama’s visit to Techmer PM in Clinton on Friday. (Photo courtesy UT)

 

CLINTON—President Obama took the stage at Techmer PM in Clinton on Friday to announce that the University of Tennessee in Knoxville will head a $259 million advanced manufacturing project and that Oak Ridge National Laboratory will play a key role. The president shared the spotlight with a shiny example of innovation, research, and collaboration between the two—a Shelby Cobra 3D printed car.

The car was highlighted during Obama’s visit as an example of the changing world of manufacturing. It was produced with major contributions from a pair of student interns from UT’s College of Engineering—Alex Roschli and Andrew Messing, a press release said.

Roschli and Messing, both seniors in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, are doing internships at ORNL, where the car was printed at the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility. [Read more…]

UT College of Engineering helps kick off robot season; Secret City Wildbots take part

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Oak Ridge Secret City Wildcats

From left to right, Eli Charles, Olivia Mahathy, Steven Charles. and Moire Gabor, part of the Secret City Wildbots from Oak Ridge High School, work on the initial stages of their robot. (Photos courtesy UT)

 

KNOXVILLE—For many, the end of football season usually means attention turns to basketball, but for more than 400 budding scientists and engineers who came to the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on Saturday it marks the start of something else: robot season.

FIRST Robotics kicked off its 2015 game, Recycle Rush, with a live reveal broadcast online to teams around the world, including 29 teams who gathered at Cox Auditorium on the UT campus.

“Saturday marks the first time that any of the teams get to see the challenge of this year’s game,” said L.J. Robinson, Tennessee’s regional director of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). “The kickoff event is a big deal in its own right, with gatherings held around the world to watch the announcement.

“Certainly, it’s an exciting moment for those new to the competition.” [Read more…]

Daughters of American Revolution chapter meets Saturday

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The Clinch Bend Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution will start the new year with a 1 p.m. meeting on January 10 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Oak Ridge.

The guest speaker will be Joan L. Markel, the Civil War curator at the University of Tennessee’s Frank L. McClung Museum. She will be speaking on the Civil War in East Tennessee, a press release said.

“Please plan to attend this intriguing program,” the release said. For more information, go to http://www.tndar.org/~clinchbend/ or call (865) 945-5605.

UT Arboretum Society has inaugural New Year’s Day Walk

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UT Arboretum Trail Junipers

UT Arboretum trail junipers (Photo courtesy UT Forest Resources AgResearch and Education Center)

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Do you want to get some exercise on New Year’s Day? Come to the University of Tennessee Arboretum for a short hike.

If you are overloaded on football, food, and festivities, the UT Arboretum Society is offering a great alternative: the inaugural New Year’s Day Walk at the UT Arboretum at 901 South Illinois Avenue in Oak Ridge. [Read more…]

Former ORNL employee in inaugural engineering Hall of Fame at UT

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UT Mabe Hall of Fame

Clockwise from upper left are William Snyder, Richard Rosenberg, Rinehart Bright, and Henry Hartsfield. (Photo courtesy UT)

 

Former chancellor, astronaut also honored

KNOXVILLE—In 1847, a course offering studies in mechanical philosophies and mechanics appeared in what was then East Tennessee University.

Now, almost 170 years later, the school is the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, and the course has grown into the College of Engineering’s Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering, or MABE, two-thirds of which would have been considered science fiction to those many years ago.

Now, the department is calling upon that legacy as it prepares to open its Hall of Fame.

The honor of being in the inaugural class belongs to a chancellor, an astronaut, an automotive pioneer, and a person who had a longtime presence in various Oak Ridge facilities. [Read more…]

Glazer, developer of former Downtown Shopping Center, dies at 93

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Guilford Glazer and Diane Pregerson Glazer

Guilford Glazer and Diane Pregerson Glazer (Source: Tel Aviv University)

 

Guilford Glazer

Guilford Glazer (Source: American Friends of Tel Aviv University)

Note: This story was last updated at 12:30 p.m.

Philanthropist and developer Guilford Glazer, whose company built the former Downtown Shopping Center in Oak Ridge in the 1950s, died at his Beverly Hills home in California on Tuesday. He was 93.

Glazer, who still owns property in Oak Ridge and Knoxville, was born in Knoxville in 1921. He was one of seven children born to Eastern European immigrants, according to a story in the Beverly Hills Courier. He studied engineering at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., for two years before joining the Navy during World War II, working in ship construction.

When he returned home from the war, Glazer entered the business world when he took over the family welding shop and turned it into a major steel fabrication business, Glazer Steel Corporation, the Courier said. Glazer Steel fabricated bridges and many other structures for the government of France, among many other customers.

“Glazer’s first development was a building in Knoxville that has been described as the city’s ‘first high-rise apartment building,'” the Courier said. “He entered the real estate business in 1951, when a company he led was selected by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission to build a shopping center in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. That shopping center opened in 1955 and not long after, Glazer picked up and moved to Los Angeles.” [Read more…]

Paul Langan to lead ORNL’s Neutron Sciences Directorate

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Paul Langan

Paul Langan

Paul Langan, a senior scientist and distinguished research staff member at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named ORNL’s associate laboratory director for neutron sciences.

Langan will lead the laboratory’s neutron science activities, which include two leading DOE Office of Science user facilities for neutron scattering analysis: the Spallation Neutron Source, or SNS, and the High Flux Isotope Reactor, or HFIR.

“As associate laboratory director, Paul will further broaden our role in neutron sciences globally, expand our instrument capabilities, and prepare for a second target station at the SNS,” ORNL Director Thom Mason said in a press release. [Read more…]

Y-12, UT sign agreement to continue, expand collaborative work

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Y-12 and UT MOU Signing

UT Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek, left, and CNS President and CEO Jim Haynes sign a Memorandum of Understanding to expand collaboration between the university and CNS. Joining them for the signing are Taylor Eighmy, UT Vice Chancellor for Research and Engagement, and Tom Berg, CNS Director of Technology Development and Technology Transfer, right. (Photo by Brett Pate)

 

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Partnership combines strengths to train future workforce, solve national challenges

A memorandum of understanding signed Thursday by Consolidated Nuclear Security and the University of Tennessee in Knoxville will expand collaborations while making the country safer and more secure. CNS and the university collaborate in areas ranging from joint research to analyzing business operations and pushing more technologies into the private sector.

The partnership between the university and the Y-12 National Security Complex, which began in 2011, combines the leading research talents of the university with Y-12’s successful track record in technology development and application that bolsters national security. Through CNS, the agreement now also incorporates the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas.

CNS manages and operates Y-12 and the Pantex Plant for the National Nuclear Security Administration. [Read more…]

Randy Boyd named state commissioner of economic, community development

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Photo courtesy UT Torchbearer

Photo courtesy UT Torchbearer

East Tennessee businessman Randy Body has been named commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Governor Bill Haslam announced Thursday.

Boyd, 55, is chairman of Radio Systems Corporation, which he started in 1991. Radio Systems is headquartered in Knoxville and has more than 650 associates worldwide with offices in seven countries, a press release said.

Radio Systems is the company that donated $100,000 donation to the PetSafe Dog Park at Big Turtle Park in Oak Ridge.

The press release said Boyd is a successful entrepreneur who served as a full-time, unpaid special adviser to the governor for higher education in 2013, focusing on the “Drive to 55” initiative to bring the percentage of Tennesseans with college degrees or certificates from 32 percent up to 55 percent by the year 2025. Boyd’s work resulted in the Tennessee Promise, a program that provides two years of community college or a college of applied technology free of tuition and fees to graduating Tennessee high school seniors. [Read more…]

Oak Ridge elementary schools participate in ‘Foodie Fridays’

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Adrianna King and Abbie Cary

Linden Elementary School second-grader Adrianna King and University of Tennessee Extension Outreach Coordinator Abbie Cary pose for a picture in front of a broccoli poster on Foodie Friday. (Photo courtesy Oak Ridge Schools)

This year, each elementary school throughout the Oak Ridge Schools district will participate in Foodie Friday. Foodie Friday is made available through a partnership between Oak Ridge Schools Coordinated School Health, food service provider Aramark, and the University of Tennessee Extension Office, a press release said.

Each Friday, volunteers from the UT Extension Office and the Anderson County Health Department prepare healthy samples, provided by Aramark, to sample during elementary school lunch periods. The students talk about the foods, see how it is prepared, and share their thoughts on how they taste, the Oak Ridge Schools release said.

Linden Elementary School is the first school of the year to participate in the program. The students have sampled red peppers, grapes, broccoli, green peppers, cherry tomatoes, and apples. Educational nutritional information is also provided to the teachers and students through the UT Extension office.

Foodie Friday will return after winter break at Glenwood Elementary School starting January 16, Woodland Elementary School on March 6, and Willow Brook Elementary School on April 10. [Read more…]