Tom King, a longtime leader in electric grid research at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named director of the Next-Generation Data Centers Institute (NGDCI). The institute aligns ORNL’s capabilities across computing, energy systems and applied engineering to provide the scientific foundation for the next generation of affordable, efficient, reliable AI data centers integrated with the U.S. electric grid.
In this role, King will oversee research in NGDCI’s key focus areas: thermal management, power system physical framework or architecture, grid integration, operations and load management, security, decision sciences and integrated systems modeling.
“Tom brings the expertise and strategy needed to ensure that this institute accelerates the commercialization of new scientific innovations developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory,” said Robert Wagner, ORNL’s associate laboratory director of Energy Science and Technology. “His experience working with industry, utilities and states will be critical to helping the nation address the energy, reliability and infrastructure challenges associated with next-generation AI systems.”
King’s extensive background in grid research is uniquely suited for the NGDCI. At ORNL, he has served in various leadership roles for more than 20 years and currently is the Grid Infrastructure Program director. King was recently on special assignment to DOE as a senior advisor in grid deployment. In 2012, he served in a joint role with the University of Tennessee as the director of innovation and industry for CURENT, the National Science Foundation/DOE Engineering Research Center, which focused on wide area situational awareness and wide area controls of the electric grid.
“The Next-Generation Data Centers Institute supports industry by solving AI data center challenges,” King said. “The successful deployment of data centers requires coordinating advancements in power, cooling operations and the grid. This institute brings these elements together so that we can design, test and validate systems as a whole.”
To reduce risk and accelerate innovation in the technologies that underlie AI data centers, NGDCI will leverage expertise across ORNL such as the ExaDIGIT platform to model interactions between computing, energy systems and the grid; hardware-in-the-loop environments to test equipment under realistic operating conditions; real-time virtual models or digital twins to link chip, rack facility and grid performance; and the lab-as-a-test bed approach to validate performance before industry adoption.
NGDCI also supports DOE’s Genesis Mission by linking the nation’s most powerful computing resources with the energy systems that support them, doubling the productivity and impact of American research and development within a decade.
“I look forward to guiding research and development that the nation is depending on,” King said. “This institute aligns with the Department of Energy’s priorities to strengthen grid reliability, enable advanced computing and support our leadership in AI infrastructure.”
Prior to joining ORNL, King was a program manager at DOE working in distributed energy and industrial technologies. He also worked in the commercial sector where he served in leadership roles within fossil energy generation.
King earned a mechanical engineering degree from Clarkson University and a master’s in materials engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He earned a master’s in business administration from the University of Tennessee.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science.
