Joan Bienvenue

Director, University of Tennessee Oak Ridge Innovation Institute

Joan Bienvenue serves as the first executive director of the University of Tennessee Oak Ridge Innovation Institute, established in 2020 to align the expertise and infrastructure of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the university in support of world-leading research and talent development. As director, Bienvenue will also serve as a vice provost at UT.

As director of UT-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute, she is responsible for developing a strategy to establish leading-edge interdisciplinary graduate research in emerging fields, build world-leading programs that leverage UT and ORNL’s capabilities, and lead recruitment of faculty, staff, and students.