HOLA ORNL is managed by a board of five lab employees, who serve for 1-year terms on a rolling basis.
These members are elected once a year by polling all of the people (Hispanic and Latinx or not) who are part of the HOLA ORNL community and have registered on our mailing list.
Below are the five members of the current HOLA ORNL board.
Eddie López-Honorato
Vice president
Eddie joined ORNL in March 2020 as R&D Staff in the Nuclear Energy and Fuel Cycle Division. For the past 8 years, he has worked in rural and impoverished areas in Mexico supporting STEM. Among other things, as part of his work promoting Latin-Americans in materials science, he is the current vice-president of the Mexican Center for Innovation in Ocean Energy and a member of the Latin American Network for Education in Nuclear Technology: "I'm honored to be part of this younger generation that will be reimagining the participation of Hispanics and Latin Americans at ORNL."
Andrea Schneibel
Communications and Outreach Lead
Andrea joined ORNL in late 2019 as a science writer. She reports on FFESD's work to make fusion energy a viable power source. She's also worked for the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, where she wrote about scientific research made possible through high-performance computing.
Before coming to ORNL, Andrea worked as a science journalist and communications consultant for both the private sector and non-profit organizations in Latin America (she's originally from Caracas, Venezuela), Europe, and the United States.
Some of the working experiences that have shaped her career include Scientific American, the National Audubon Society, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Felipe Polo-Garzón
Treasurer/Secretary
Originally from Colombia, Felipe moved to the US in 2011 to get his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Clemson University. He joined ORNL in 2016 as a post-doc and later became an R&D Staff. At Clemson, he was president of SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans in Science) and had the opportunity to get involved with the local community. In Knoxville, he has volunteered in Centro Hispano of East TN as a Spanish teacher for illiterate Latinos, and has been a mentor in the Youth Program, leading conversation tables in Spanish.