Dilling named ORNL institutional strategic planning director

Jens Dilling has been selected director of institutional strategic planning for the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He will join the lab on August 9.

ORNL’s annual strategic planning process synthesizes inputs from a range of DOE sources to create a comprehensive plan for the laboratory and produces planning products such as the lab agenda. As institutional strategic planning director, Dilling will guide the development of laboratory strategies, strategic investments and annual planning, as well as manage the laboratory’s discretionary investment portfolio. His responsibilities will also include ORNL’s Research Library, which equips research staff with the tools to advance innovation and lead in scientific discourse and discovery.

“I am very excited about joining the ORNL organization and am looking forward to working with the great people at the lab and in the community,” Dilling said. “For many years, I have known the laboratory as a top research destination. I’m thrilled to be at the forefront of what drives ORNL’s science and technical breakthroughs.”

Dilling currently serves as associate laboratory director for physical sciences at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator center. He previously served as deputy head of the science division and led the department of nuclear physics and isotope separator and accelerator science.

His physics research focuses on characterizing the strong force using precise mass measurements, in particular investigating atomic physics techniques applied to nuclear physics using particle accelerators. He proposed, co-designed and led the construction of the TRIUMF Ion Trap for Atomic and Nuclear Science. He has been an adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia since 2004. He received his doctorate and undergraduate degrees in physics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany.

Dilling is a member of the Canadian Association of Physicists, the American Physical Society, or APS, and the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. His awards and honors include fellow of the APS, the Vogt Medal for Subatomic Physics from the Canadian Association of Physicists, visiting EMMI-Professor at the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and the University of Heidelberg, the APS Francis Pipkin Award, and the Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada.

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