Bio
Thomas Proffen is leading the High Performance Computing and Data Analytics Science Initiative of the Neutron Science Directorate at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Proffen was previously the Neutron Data Analysis and Visualization Division Director and Group Leader for Diffraction after joining ORNL in 2011.
Proffen received his PhD from the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich in 1995 for his work on structural disorder in stabilized zirconia. He then moved to the Research School of Chemistry at the Australian National University as a Postdoc continuing his work on analyzing diffuse scattering from disordered materials. In 1998 he took a Research Associates position at Michigan State University adding the atomic pair distribution function method to his portfolio of analysis tools for disordered materials. These efforts continued as he moved to the Lujan Neutron Scattering Center at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2001 to upgrade the neutron total scattering instrument NPDF promoting the total scattering technique applied to disordered crystalline and nanomaterials before moving to ORNL.
In his free time, Proffen founded and volunteers with Oak Ridge Computer Science Girls.
Awards
Fellow American Association for the Advancement of Science
Fellow Neutron Scattering Society of America
Fellow American Crystallographic Association