In pre-pandemic days, the Office of Research and Engagement launched Coffee and Convergence, a series of casual gatherings focused on the University of Tennessee’s strategic areas of emphasis. Tom Zawodzinski, the UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair Professor for Electrical Energy Conversion and Storage, was among the first to participate, and he said the event helped him build new collaborations. Continue reading
Governor’s Chair
UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair to Lead Major Research for US Navy
The US Navy has chosen a UT professor to lead one of its Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) programs for the first time in the 30-year history of the initiative.
Suresh Babu, the UT–Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Advanced Manufacturing, will lead a team that will focus on properties, defects, and instabilities in advanced manufactured alloys, an area of great importance to the Navy.
According to the Office of Naval Research, the award will total roughly $1.5 million a year for three years and be extendable to five years.
“To be leading the first team from UT picked to handle a MURI project is quite an honor,” said Babu, who is also a professor in UT’s Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering. “The basic research we are doing will focus on addressing solid stabilities in metal alloys subjected to thermo-mechanical transients typical of additive manufacturing, also referred to as 3D printing, through advanced in-situ and ex-situ measurements.”
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Recognitions, December 16
The Office of Research and Engagement is pleased to celebrate this week, not only the following recognitions from around campus, but an abundance of accomplishments within our own team.
As always, we ask that you please share your faculty, staff, and student accomplishments for inclusion in our Recognitions section to Erin Chapin (erin.chapin@utk.edu).
- UT was ranked among the top institutions in Tennessee for teacher preparation by the 2016 Teacher Preparation Report Card. UT exceeded state averages in eight of the nine metrics measuring institutions on the basis of meeting Tennessee’s goals for instructing and preparing effective teachers.
- UT has been named to the Kiplingers Personal Finance list of the Top 300 Best College Values for 2017, placing 49th on the list of public colleges and universities (a jump from 71st last year).
UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair Liu Named Fellow of National Academy of Inventors

Yilu Liu, the joint UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Power Electronics.
A University of Tennessee, Knoxville, faculty member who is an expert on improving the power grid is being inducted as a 2016 fellow of the National Academy of Inventors.
Yilu Liu, the UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Governor’s Chair for Power Electronics, serves as deputy director of the National Science Foundation-backed Center for Ultra-wide-area Resilient Electric Energy Transmission Networks—CURENT—which is housed in UT’s Tickle College of Engineering.
Through her role with CURENT, as a researcher, and as a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UT, Liu has helped pioneer many of the advancements in the safeguarding of the nation’s power grid.
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