The UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute – Bridging UT and ORNL through graduate education

Abstract:

The UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute (UT-ORII) aligns the expertise and infrastructure of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to support research, education, and workforce development. UT-ORII’s overall education mission is to enable UT PhD students to take full advantage of the world class facilities and resources that are available at ORNL. The Bredesen Center, which is now housed within UT-ORII, administers three PhD programs—Data Science and Engineering, Energy Science and Engineering, and Genome Science and Technology—that were designed to facilitate this access for graduate students. More recently, UT-ORII has broadened the scope of its financial support, which covers a full year of tuition, stipend, fees, and health insurance, to include departmental PhD students who utilize ORNL for their dissertation research.  In combination, these two approaches will help UT-ORII move towards its goal of making UT a nationally-recognized hub for interdisciplinary graduate education and talent development.  This lunch talk will include a brief introduction to UT-ORII and the status of its educational mission, and will cover the basics for how to engage with UT-ORII and the Bredesen Center in support of graduate education.

Biography:

Brynn H. Voy is Education and Bredesen Center Director for the UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute and professor of animal science. She spent 13 years in the Biosciences Division at ORNL as a postdoc and staff scientist before joining the UT faculty in 2009. Voy received her PhD in physiology and bachelor’s degree in zoology from UT Knoxville.

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