Dr. Michael Simpson, Professor of Materials Sciences and Engineering, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Corporate Fellow, and Group Leader of the Nanofabrication Research Laboratory Group in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) at ORNL, has been appointed the next director of the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Biological Sciences (JIBS). This appointment is in addition to his role at CNMS.

Simpson, an expert in stochastic processes in gene expression, nanobiosciences, and synthetic biology, is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and is a member of the JIBS Advisory Board. His appointment begins October 20, 2014. Simpson will follow Dr. Gary Sayler as the second JIBS director. Sayler, Professor of Microbiology and Director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology, will retire at the end of 2015.