Karen K Dunlap

Bio

Karen Dunlap is the communications coordinator for the Energy Science and Technology Directorate (ESTD). ESTD delivers breakthroughs in energy from generation to distribution and storage to end use in support of Department of Energy missions. ESTD offers a unique culture of entrepreneurship for translating science into solutions for the most critical problems facing the country at the nexus of energy and security.

Prior to joining ESTD, Dunlap was communications coordinator for ORNL's Partnerships Office, which oversees strategic partnerships, research security, technology transfer and commercialization, and Innovation Crossroads, a DOE Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program node. 

Previously, Dunlap was a media relations specialist on the lab's central communications team, where she re-launched ORNL in the News as a media relations product, shepherded the Collaboration Nation site and campaign, and created Big Science, the lab's monthly external newsletter.

Before joining ORNL in 2020, she was a senior public relations specialist in the Office of Communications and Marketing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She has more than 15 years of journalism experience at newspapers in Tennessee and Louisiana. She has a bachelor's degree in journalism from Louisiana State University.

She is a member of the National Association for Science Writers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Digital Marketing Institute.