New Laboratory Director Johney Green

MIKE

Welcome to Science at Work, a new podcast from Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina. I’m your host, Mike Ettlemyer. Science at work is a production of the Savannah River National Laboratory, SRNL Office of Communications. With this podcast, we aim to build understanding of what a national lab is and what it does so that the non-scientists among us, myself included, understand how SRNL puts science to work and advances our mission areas of national security, environmental stewardship and energy resilience.

And so we like to speak with the scientists, engineers and other professionals who are at the heart of who we are, what we do and why it matters. Today we’re speaking with Johney Green, who is our new laboratory director at SRNL. Welcome, Johnny, to the podcast.

DR. GREEN

Thank you for having me.

MIKE

It’s great to have you here. Well, I think we’ll get right into it. You became our new lab director just at the start of this year. Not too long ago. But it might feel longer than maybe it has been. Tell us about what attracted you to SRNL and how your background prepared you for this new challenge?

DR GREENE

I would say one thing that really attracted me to the laboratory is its location. It’s in the Southeast. And I think nuclear energy is really important here, and it’s a priority. And the mission of the laboratory is critically important for the nation. And so those were things that were really attractive. And I think that the South is, I would say, under the radar screen in terms of technology and innovation.

And so, I thought that there was an opportunity to really make a difference not only for the nation, but the region. Coming here to the laboratory and my experience at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where I spent a little over 20 years, which is outside Knoxville, Tennessee, was helpful.

I was exposed to some of the missions of Environmental Management and NNSA, as well as some of the applied energy programs, and also had the opportunity to spend quite a bit of time at NREL, out in Colorado, for eight years and was exposed to security for some of the renewable energy technologies that’s relevant to this. And I also got the opportunity to spend three years on the Defense Science Board. I learned a lot about the national security work that SRNL does when I was on the Defense Science Board. And so that was really, I would say, really an attractive feature for the lab to better understand its critical importance to the nation.

One additional thing is that I’m from the South, grew up in and between Memphis, Tennessee, and Baton Rouge. I attended graduate school at Georgia Tech. So, a lot of roots here in the South, in the Southeast. And so, I really love the culture and just love, love being back home.

MIKE

It’s good to have you back. So, you’ve spent time listening to the workforce and the leadership team here leading us forward in several ways. In your short time here at SRNL, talk about your priorities for the lab. And developing a strategy for the future.

DR. GREEN

So, it’s really been exciting to work with the leadership team to define our lab agenda. And we’ve got a few dimensions to it. And so, the first dimension is what are our mission areas? What are we really focused on as the laboratory? And I mentioned some of those things when I talked about why I was excited about coming here.

And the three mission areas that we hope that all our staff can see themselves in: The first one is national security. We have a strong legacy of national security work here at the laboratory. The second area is environmental stewardship. We have extraordinary expertise in nuclear materials and radioactive materials. And how do you help, treat and handle and reuse those, in a circular manner.

And then energy resilience. We really want to look at how do you secure the grid, how do you make sure that our energy infrastructure is resilient? This area was terribly impacted by a hurricane recently. And so how can we support efforts to bring back and restore power if needed or prevent the power from going out.

MIKE

Right. Ok, and what should people know about SRNL’s strengths? And, you know, where we sit within the Department of Energy’s network of national laboratories.

DR. GREEN

We’re unique. The Department of Energy national laboratories – there are 17 of them. And I’m very fortunate to be leading one of the 17, a very rare opportunity to do this. Not many opportunities because there are so few national labs. So, what makes us unique is we are the only laboratory stewarded by the Environmental Management Office of the Department of Energy.

So, this comes out of the Cold War. How, when the nuclear stockpile was being developed, the nuclear material that was left over, part of the process, we helped to figure out how to turn it into glass or to cementitious material. And so that’s really a lot of our legacy. And our background is in that area.

And we also are extremely well known for tritium science. We understand tritium. Tritium is a key ingredient for nuclear deterrence, and for new areas such as fusion energy. And you can’t have either without tritium. I say it’s the bacon. It’s the bacon of nuclear deterrence and fusion. You’ve got to have tritium.

MIKE

That’s right. And so, you’ve conducted important work with industry partners, notably Ford Motor Company. That’s in your background in terms of work you’ve done. How do you approach working with industry and university partners to advance science, engineering and technology?

DR. GREEN

I think those collaborations are especially important for an applied laboratory. Our tagline is we put science to work. And so, our staff gets energized by not just doing science for science’s sake, but actually having an application and being able to make a difference. We don’t have all the capabilities here, the laboratory, so we have to partner in order to be successful.

And I was fortunate. I had the opportunity to be a visiting scientist at Ford Motor Company early in my career and do some, interesting research with them. And one of the key ingredients is you want to have a win-win situation. Typically, the organization has a challenge that they need help with. And then the laboratory has a unique skill set that they can contribute to help that industry partner address that need.

Academic partners are trying to train the next generation of researchers and scientists, and so collaborative research with the national laboratory can expose them to different tools and maybe techniques that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. So that’s what helps our academic partners. And so, we’ve got a new facility coming online, the Advanced Manufacturing Research Collaborative or AMC facility at the campus of one of our partners, University of South Carolina Aiken.

Fantastic facility and right next door, the South Carolina National Guard is going to build a cyber facility for us to conduct joint research activities. And really the intent of the [AMC] is to be the external facing research and development extension of the laboratory so we can engage with industry and academic partners in terms of workforce development and research activities, to increase our impact within the region, and within the community and nation as well.

And so, we’ve got some fantastic fundamental science capabilities and material design and separations, artificial intelligence, automation, manufacturing, cybersecurity. And what we really want to do is leverage those to address challenges for environmental cleanup technologies, energy infrastructure technologies, nuclear energy technologies. We’ve got a nuclear energy renaissance happening here in the nation, and fusion energy, which is also a key priority.

And so, one example of that is some work that we’re doing with a key partner in Silica-X. We’re working with them right now to develop glass foams that, could potentially be used to help treat some of the nuclear material at the 15 sites we’re trying to clean up. And so that’s one example of a great industrial partnership that’s underway that leverages, you know, some of those fundamental capabilities we have and using it for the environmental cleanup area.

MIKE

Yeah, that sounds like a cool technology. And I’m sure we’re going to be doing a lot more of that sort of thing at the AMC. So wanted to ask a question about our interns that we have here and training future scientists. You recently welcomed our largest cohort of interns to SRNL.

Now, as they become embedded within teams here at the lab. What did you say to them, as a former intern and mentor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory? To help them work toward their goals for learning or contributing to the science we do at a national lab.

DR. GREEN

Well, first I have to say, I love interns. I was an intern. It was a life changing experience. I love internships; they provide great educational opportunities for the staff, and they bring in new ideas and fresh ideas. And it’s really the next generation where they stay here at the laboratory, or they go somewhere else that helps them in their science career and to build their resume and gain fantastic experiences.

So, I shared with the cohort how much my internships meant to me when I was a graduate student and the impact it had on me. I had great mentors when I was there, Brian West was one of my mentors at Oak Ridge and several others. And so, they taught me a lot of fantastic life lessons during that time.

And I also was fortunate enough to mentor other interns myself and try to give back. I shared a little bit of knowledge that I have with interns. But I’ve always loved STEM outreach. I always love supporting and working with interns, and I love it when it’s summertime and they come here and, you know, transform the campus for a few weeks and give us an injection of energy that we need.

MIKE

Yeah, it’s great to have that cohort come in and, there’s a lot of activity, a lot of energy here.

Well, thank you, sir, for being with us today on the podcast. And thank you all for tuning in. Science at Work is a production of the Savannah River National Laboratory in Aiken, South Carolina.