July 31, 2024 – The University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute’s Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education has named Gregory D. Peterson as program director of its Data Science and Engineering (DSE) graduate program. Peterson will assume the role on August 1.
The position was recently left vacant by Russell Zaretzki, who stepped down to focus more on his equally important role as an associate professor with the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Zaretzki was instrumental in the launch of the DSE program and has led the program since then.
“We were extremely fortunate to have had Russell at the helm of the DSE program since its launch eight years ago. Thanks to his vision and leadership, we’re well positioned to continue the growth of the program and prepare even more students to meet the ever-changing needs of our data-driven world,” said Brynn Voy, UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute’s education director and Bredesen Center director.
“Greg’s 12-plus years of experience as the director of UT’s National Institute for Computational Sciences and his time as head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, make him an ideal choice for continuing this growth.”
Peterson will work closely with Bredesen Center and UT-ORII leadership to further develop and grow the DSE PhD program, one of three joint UT-ORNL PhD programs. These programs (DSE, Energy Science and Engineering, and Genome Science and Technology) were created to unite UT and ORNL resources in support of graduate education, and to leverage the impact of ORNL’s reputation and capabilities in recruiting talented UT PhD students. Peterson’s role, along with that of the ESE and GST program directors, will be critical in helping UT-ORII meet its goal of tripling the number of UT graduate students who conduct research at ORNL.
“Data science and engineering represents a transformational field that is revolutionizing our society, including scientific research and scholarship, engineering design, human health, and business processes,” Peterson said. “Data science and engineering can potentially impact every department at UT as well as the entire panoply of research endeavors at ORNL. I’m excited to work with the DSE students, as well as the faculty and staff helping to train these students, to enable data-driven advances.”
When UT and ORNL came together to create the DSE doctoral program in 2017, the Bredesen Center’s program was one of just three data science doctoral programs in the entire nation. While this number has grown, the Bredesen Center is still the only joint program between a national lab and university.
Peterson received his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering and bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from Washington University, St. Louis. He is a professor in UT’s Min H. Kao Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). He recently completed a five-year term as department head for EECS. Since 2012, he has served as the director of the National Institute for Computational Sciences, UT’s supercomputing center. Prior to joining UT in 2000, Peterson served as a captain at the Air Force Research Lab. His research interests include parallel processing, computational and data science, electronic design automation, performance evaluation, and high-performance reconfigurable computing.
Learn more about the Bredesen Center’s DSE and other PhD programs at: https://bredesencenter.utk.edu/.
