Stephen Streiffer Picked to Direct Oak Ridge National Lab

Oak Ridge National Lab announced last week that Stephen Streiffer will join the lab in October as its next director. Streiffer is currently Stanford University’s vice president for SLAC National Accelerator Lab, which the university manages on behalf of the Department of Energy, and he is also serving as the lab’s acting director.

He earned a doctorate in materials science and engineering from Stanford and, before moving back there last year, spent much of his career at Argonne National Lab, where he held various leadership roles. Most recently, he was deputy lab director for science and technology from 2020 to 2022, and he directed Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source user facility from 2014 to 2020 as it prepared for a major upgrade now being installed.

He also was co-director of the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory , a DOE initiative to provide researchers investigating COVID-19 with priority access to national lab facilities.

Thomas Zacharia stepped down as director of Oak Ridge at the end of last year and the lab is being led on an interim basis by Jeff Smith, who recently retired as the lab’s deputy for operations.

SLAC announced earlier this month that its next director will be John Sarrao, currently the deputy director for science, technology, and engineering at Los Alamos National Lab.