Ellingson is one of no more than ten graduate students worldwide who received the award this year. It is given in recognition of the quality and significance of her research in integrating supercomputing technologies with biopharmaceutical research.

Ellingson has been successful in developing efficient programs for screening chemicals for their potential to interact with proteins.  Due to the her program’s association with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she is able to use the Kraken, Jaguar, and Titan supercomputers to bridge supercomputing and biological research with particular importance in drug discovery and chemical/system biology.

The award comes with a travel fellowship to the national American Chemical Society meeting in Indianapolis this fall, a recognition ceremony during the meeting, and a free license of a well-known industrial computational chemistry program.

Ellingson’s work is performed in the UT/ORNL Center for Molecular Biophysics, under the supervision of Jerome Baudry, assistant professor in the Biochemistry and Molecular and Cellular Biology department , and Genome Science and Technology faculty in collaboration with Jeremy Smith, UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair for Molecular Biophysics. Her research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy.

Ellingson has also recently won the 2013 Science Alliance award and, among many travel fellowships, the Grace Hopper Celebration for Women in Computing and Supercomputing Broader Engagement awards several years in a row. She has also co-authored many peer-reviewed publications with her advisor and collaborators.

The award is sponsored by the society’s Computers in Chemistry division in association with the Canadian scientific software company Chemical Computing Group. For more information, visit the ACS website.

(L to R) Dimitrios A. Kakavelakis, III (Second), Joseph Majdalani (Advisor), and Andrew Fist (First)

For the fourth year in a row, Professor Joe Majdalani’s teams at the University of Tennessee Space Institute have won best papers at the sixty-fourth American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Southeastern Regional Student Conference. The UTSI teams competed against more than 200 graduate and undergraduate students in Raleigh, North Carolina. To read more, visit the UTSI website.

WBIR-TV featured the keynote address by Charles W. “Wick” Moorman, chairman, president and CEO of Norfolk Southern Corp., at the 2013 Joint Rail Conference hosted by the Center for Transportation Research at UT. He discussed the conference theme, Next Generation Railroads, Next Generation Railroaders: Innovations and People for the Future. “Knoxville is strategically important for Norfolk Southern. It lies on one of our new main corridor developments, the so-called Crescent Corridor to move traffic off the highways between the south and the southwest,” he said.

To view Ken Schwall’s story, visit WBIR’s website.

• New program will expand UT department’s focus in international human rights
• Body of Evidence: UT using donated corpses in mass grave project with international aspirations
• Military atrocities: El Salvador
• Editorial: Projects such as Body Farm pay of academically

Y-12 lawyer Chuck Young discusses the Federal Acquisition Regulation with intern Leigh Outten. Photo credit: Y-12 Photography

Leigh Outten is something of a degree collector. She holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering; two master’s degrees from MIT—one in nuclear engineering, the other in technology and policy—and an MBA from a French school. Now she’s in her third year of UT’s law program. What does one do with such a wide array of degrees?

“My dream is to work at the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Outten said. “I think the laws associated with the handling of nuclear materials are really interesting.”

Y-12′s current legal intern, Outten has found a setting that puts each of her unique educational experiences to use thanks to the UT/Y-12 Field Placement Program. The program is a unique collaboration between the College of Law and the Y-12 National Security Complex.

Chuck Young, adjunct law professor and Y-12 lawyer, says the program offers students experiences they can’t get elsewhere.

A good example is the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), a massive book governing the ways federal entities and often their contractors, like B&W Y-12, conduct their business and procurement operations.

“I’d been practicing law for fifteen years before I came out here, and I’m still learning a lot about this,” said Young, who estimates that fewer than two dozen practicing attorneys in the Knoxville legal community understand the FAR. “For a second-year law student to already have that leg up is a huge advantage.”

The Field Placement Program is designed to give students a unique internship opportunity centered on the contractual, commercialization, and compliance activities that take place at a federal site like Y-12. That includes work on numerous technology transfer initiatives, patent applications, and other site wide efforts to commercialize Y-12 innovations.

“My experience gave me valuable insight into the government contractor context and its unique regulatory framework,” said Kourtney Hennard, who completed an internship last summer and intends to become a patent attorney upon graduation. “My exposure to various elements of the patent prosecution process will be invaluable in my future career.”

For Outten, the internship is an opportunity to work toward her IAEA dream.

“I’m doing basic legal work that I’ve never done before,” said Outten. “They’re allowing me to do real things, not just making copies or stuffing envelopes.”

Young says the program’s benefits work both ways.

“It’s great for these students to be able to say, ‘I’ve been inside a federal complex and I know how these things work,’” he said. “And we’re also putting more people out into the world who understand Y-12 and what we do—that will ultimately benefit us.”

-written by Y-12′s Eric Swanson