David Sholl is serving as UT-ORII’s interim executive director. He will lead the institute’s efforts to establish a hub for world-class discovery and innovation, interdisciplinary graduate education and talent development, while a national search for UT-ORII’s executive director is underway.

For the past two years, Sholl has headed Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Transformational Decarbonization Initiative. For the last year he has also served part-time with the Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), working on the portfolio strategy and multiyear program plan for OCED’s execution of clean energy demonstration projects.

From 2013-2021, Sholl was the School Chair of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is a Fellow of AIChE and AAAS.

Sholl has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and several books, including Density Functional Theory: A Practical Introduction (with Jan Steckel, 2009) and Success and Creativity in Scientific Research: Amaze Your Friends and Surprise Yourself (2021). His research has primarily focused on using materials modeling methods to develop new materials and processes for chemical separations and energy applications. He has advised over 80 PhD students and postdoctoral researchers.

Sholl received doctorate and master’s degrees in applied mathematics from the University of Colorado and a bachelor’s in theoretical physics from the Australian National University.