Thomas Zacharia is University of Tennessee vice president for science and technology, as well as associate laboratory director for computing and computational sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In his role at UT, held since October 2007, Zacharia coordinates efforts to integrate supercomputing into research programs at the university’s various campuses across the state.
In his role at ORNL, Zacharia leads the laboratory’s research agenda in high-performance computing, furthering the Department of Energy’s missions in advancing science, national security, energy security, and sustainable development.
Supercomputing is an increasingly important tool used to solve problems as complex and diverse as those being studied in the fields of healthcare, engineering and climate change. Zacharia leads UT’s efforts to investigate these and other complex problems through high-performance computing resources. He also is a professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Tennessee.
Under Zacharia’s leadership, UT and ORNL have established a partnership with the National Science Foundation focused upon computational research. Zacharia led the joint proposal for a $65 million award to build one of the world’s most powerful supercomputers at the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences. In August, the Foundation notified the UT-ORNL team of approval for the grant that, if finalized, would further strengthen the UT-ORNL partnership among the ranks of the nation’s elite centers of high-performance computing.
Prior to his appointment as associate laboratory director, Zacharia served ORNL in nearly every capacity since 1987, including the founding group leader of the Modeling and Simulation Group in 1993, the founding director of the Computational Center for Industrial Innovation in 1995, and as the deputy associate laboratory director for Physical Sciences and the director of the Computer Science and Mathematics Division in 2000.
Zacharia is the recipient of several scientific and technical awards, a number of leadership awards, and regularly serves on scientific, professional, academic, and civic boards.
He has established a successful student outreach program that has trained more than 90 under-represented and minority students in math and science. Over the last five years, his directorate has mentored more than 270 students and more than 130 post-doctoral fellows.
He received a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from India’s Karnataka Regional Engineering College in 1980 and a master’s degree in materials science from the University of Mississippi in 1984. He was awarded a doctoral degree in engineering science from Clarkson University in 1987.
