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May 26, 2007
Physicist, 42, a Native of Canada and Youngest to Lead Lab Since 1974
OAK RIDGE - Thom Mason, a 42-year-old physicist who guided the $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source to completion and directed its early research operations, will be the new director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
His appointment is effective July 1. Lab staffers were informed of the decision Friday afternoon.
Mason will succeed Jeff Wadsworth, the lab director since August 2003, who is leaving Oak Ridge to take a top executive position at Battelle Memorial Institute in Ohio. Battelle has managed the Oak Ridge lab, in partnership with the University of Tennessee, since April 2000.
"I'm excited and a little bit overwhelmed," Mason said in a telephone interview. "I never even had the foggiest direction this was where I was headed."
ORNL is well positioned at a critically important time to contribute to scientific problem-solving on issues such as the environment, energy security, national security and economic security, Mason said. "Those things are all wrapped up together," he said.
After undergoing a major modernization program in recent years, the lab needs to "deliver the science" and sustain the momentum, Mason said.
He is the youngest director at ORNL since Herman Postma, who took the reins in 1974 at age 40 and held that position for 14 years.
A native of Canada, Mason's rise to prominence has been quick and highly visible in scientific circles.
He came to Oak Ridge in 1998 as scientific director for the SNS, which was still in its early stages of development, and soon became director of experimental facilities. When SNS chief David Moncton left the project in early 2001, Mason was chosen to head the $1.4 billion project - the biggest science endeavor in the United States.
Construction of the SNS was completed ahead of time and within its budget - no small accomplishment for a government project of its size and complexity - and Mason received a lot of the credit. He was named associate lab director for neutron sciences.
UT President John Petersen, who co-chaired the two-month search for a lab director, said, "We are genuinely excited to have a person of Thom Mason's talent and experience to lead ORNL. As a world-class scientist who has already made his mark in the research community, Thom represents the future of ORNL."
U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp, R-Tenn., called Mason a brilliant and outstanding scientist with a distinguished record of achievement.
"He made us proud at SNS, and we believe he will make us proud, following in the grand traditions of Jeff Wadsworth and the many outstanding directors at ORNL throughout the years," Wamp said.
The SNS, an accelerator-based research complex, produced its first neutrons in April 2006, and since then it's been ramping up power and preparing for full research usage, still a year away. As many as 2,000 scientists from around the globe are expected to visit the site annually and use neutron beams to study the structure and properties of materials.
Mason said no decision has been made on his replacement as associate lab director for neutron sciences, overseeing the research at SNS and the High Flux Isotope Reactor. He said an international search would be conducted.
The new lab director grew up in Nova Scotia on the coast of Halifax Harbor. His father was a geophysicist at the nearby Bedford Institute for Oceanography.
He holds degrees from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and McMaster University in Ontario, where he received his Ph.D. in physics. Before coming to Oak Ridge, he was on the faculty at the University of Toronto and conducted research at sites around the world - studying such things as the magnetic properties in superconductors.
Mason became a naturalized U.S. citizen Oct. 10. Citizenship is essential to becoming director of one of the national laboratories because of the security clearances.
Soon after taking his citizenship oath, Mason said it was a family decision. "We've made the decision to move here and be here. Our kids, even though they were born in Canada, have grown up here."
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