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Five scientists from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have been elected fellows of the , or AAAS, one of the world’s largest general scientific societies and publisher of the  family of journals.

“Our newly elected AAAS fellows demonstrate the ORNL core value of impact as recognized scientific leaders in their respective fields,” said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer. “Congratulations to Ho Nyung Lee, David Graham, Andrew Sutton, Roger Rousseau and Troy Carter on this notable achievement.”

AAAS Fellows represent a distinguished group of scientists, engineers, and innovators recognized for their contributions across a wide range of disciplines — including research, teaching and technology development, as well as leadership in academia, industry and government. They are also honored for their excellence in science communication and public engagement.

ORNL’s include:

Ho Nyung Lee, Corporate Fellow, Materials Science and Technology Division

Lee was recognized by the AAAS section on Physics for his “distinguished contributions to the field of experimental condensed matter physics, particularly toward physics of oxide quantum materials, and for leadership and service to the materials science and physics community.”

Lee is a Corporate Fellow of the Materials Science and Technology Division and serves as the vice chair of the ORNL Corporate Fellow council. He served as the program director for the ORNL Materials Science and Engineering Program from 2017 to 2024 and previously as the group leader of the Quantum Heterostructures group within ORNL’s Materials Science and Technology Division from 2013 to 2020. His research interests involve the precision epitaxial synthesis of oxide-based quantum and energy materials by pulsed laser epitaxy and the physics of correlated oxide thin films and heterostructures.

Lee received his doctorate in physics from Korea University in Seoul, Korea. He did postdoctoral work at Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics in Germany. 

Lee came to ORNL in 2002. He is a winner of one of the 2006 Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers from the White House and was elected as a Fellow of the Materials Research Society, the Korean Academy of Science and Technology and the American Physical Society.

David Graham, Biosecurity Programs lead, Biosciences Division

Dave Graham is a distinguished R&D staff scientist and the leader of Biosecurity programs at ORNL. He has more than 115 research publications in microbial biochemistry, geochemistry, genomics, molecular evolution, enzyme discovery, structural biology, analytical assay development and biosynthetic pathway characterization.

Graham has led National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Department of Energy, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense-funded projects using genome and protein sequence information to identify new enzymes in coenzyme production, characterize plant sensors, deploy synthetic biology for energetic materials, and model biogeochemical processes in the Arctic tundra. His fellowship election recognizes his “distinguished contributions to the field of microbial ecology and physiology and analytical biochemistry.”

He earned his doctorate degree in microbiology from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, he serves as an editorial board member for the journals Analytical Biochemistry, Applied and Environmental Microbiology, and Journal of Bacteriology.

Andrew Sutton, senior scientist and group leader, Chemical Process Scale-Up

Sutton was recognized by the AAAS section on Chemistry for his “contributions to advancing the discipline of chemistry by addressing challenges in catalysis for energy applications and scale-up of innovative technologies for industry adoption.”

His determination to move ideas out of the lab and into commercial production made Sutton ideally suited to serve as lead for a team of entrepreneurs in the Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions Energy I-Corps program.

Currently, Sutton is focused on refining catalyst technologies for converting ethanol from plants into jet fuel blending components, delivering high efficiency at lower costs than previous methods. A new single-step process supports a more reliable and self-sufficient domestic fuel supply.

Sutton received his master’s and doctorate in chemistry from the University of Manchester in England. He worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory for 13 years and the University of California, Berkeley and Davis before joining ORNL in 2020. He is an R&D 100 Award recipient, holds several patents and serves as a joint faculty associate with the Center for Renewable Carbon at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Roger Rousseau, director of ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division

Roger Rousseau was recognized for “pioneering work in understanding the role of complex reaction environments, anharmonic effects, and collective dynamics in catalysis, and for outstanding leadership in chemical sciences.”

Rousseau is the director of ORNL’s Chemical Sciences Division where he guides the lab’s efforts in foundational chemistry with an interdisciplinary focus. He has a background in chemistry and condensed-matter physics and is an internationally recognized expert in catalysis and computational chemistry and physics. Rousseau is noted for the innovative use of theory to define the fundamental underpinnings of complex problems in fields ranging from materials physics and chemistry to computational catalysis. He has more than 250 publications and has authored or co-authored five U.S. patents. 

Rousseau joined ORNL in 2022 after a long career in the DOE national laboratory complex, including 15 years at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory where he was a lab fellow and the lead principal investigator for computational catalysis. Rousseau has taught and performed research internationally, including at the International School for Advanced Studies and the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Windsor in Canada and his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Michigan.

Troy Carter, director of ORNL’s Fusion Energy Division

Carter was recognized for his “distinguished contributions to the fields of plasma-physics and fusion energy, particularly for advancing the understanding of waves, instabilities, turbulence and transport, and for visionary leadership in national strategic planning.” Carter was named the director of the Fusion Energy Division at ORNL in 2024, where he oversees the division’s world-class technical capabilities in plasma physics, fusion materials and fusion technologies. He is responsible for developing major projects such as the Materials Plasma Exposure eXperiment, or MPEX, and ORNL’s research contributions to the international ITER experiment. 

Carter joined ORNL in 2024 after spending 22 years as a professor of physics at the University of California, Los Angeles. There Carter was the Director of the Basic Plasma Science Facility, a national collaborative research facility for plasma science. He was also the Director of the Plasma Science and Technology Institute, an organized research unit at UCLA. His research into waves, instabilities, turbulence and transport in magnetically confined plasmas is motivated by the desire to understand processes in space and astrophysical plasmas as well as by the need to develop carbon-free electricity generation via nuclear fusion. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is a recipient of the APS DPP John Dawson Excellence in Plasma Physics Research Award.

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