STAFF

Philip Rack

Interim Education Director, UT-ORII
prack@utk.edu
865-974-5344

Dr. Philip D. Rack was named the UT-ORII’s interim education director in January 2022. In this role, Rack is leading and growing UT-ORII’s three Bredesen Center UT-ORNL PhD programs at the University of Tennessee Knoxville – Energy Science and Engineering, Data Science and Engineering and Genome Science and Technology. Drawing on his 16 years as a UT-ORNL joint faculty member, Rack also is working to strengthen and expand collaborations between UT and ORNL.

Rack earned his bachelor’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and his doctorate from the University of Florida, both in materials science and engineering. Rack then joined a small startup company, Advanced Vision Technologies, in Rochester, N.Y., and in 1999 he joined the faculty in the Department of Microelectronic Engineering at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

In 2001, Rack joined the Material Science and Engineering (MSE) department at UT Knoxville. Since then, he has held a joint appointment at the Center for Nanophase Materials Science for 16 years and has been the MSE associate department head for the past six years.