Brynn leads UT-ORII’s efforts to expand UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s graduate research opportunities for students in the Bredesen Center, College of Engineering, College of Arts & Sciences and the Institute of Agriculture at UT Knoxville, and across the UT System.

Brynn’s passion for advancing STEM education and mentoring students, coupled with her extensive background as a UT alumna, ORNL postdoctoral fellow and staff scientist, and UT Bredesen Center and UTIA faculty member and department leader, make her ideally suited to take on these important leadership roles within UT-ORII.

A native Tennessean, Brynn received her Ph.D. in physiology and bachelor’s degree in zoology from UT. She then spent 13 years at ORNL, first as a postdoctoral fellow in the Mammalian Genetics and Genomics Group and then as a staff scientist in the Systems Genetics Group through 2009.

Brynn returned to UT to join the faculty in Animal Science, where she is a professor. Brynn recently completed service as the interim head of the Department of Nutrition, a position she held since 2021. She has been involved with the UT-ORNL joint Bredesen Center Genome Science and Technology program since her time at ORNL, serving as a core faculty member in the program since 2005.