TOMMY PHELPS

Oak Ridge National Laboratory
email: phelpstj@ornl.gov
http://www.esd.ornl.gov/people/phelps/phelps.html

Dr. Tommy Joe Phelps is a Senior Research scientist in the Environmental Science Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  During the 2001 and 2002 undergraduate workshops, Dr. Phelps served as a faculty mentor, assisted in recruitment of workshop participants, coordinated with other mentors to provide enriching experiences for students, assisted in improving and equipping the field lab, fabricated experimental facilities (e.g., media making and gassing/flushing/evacuation station), and provided field handy-person expertise.  Dr. Phelps routinely mentors undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctorates.  Undergraduates are typically from the DOE-undergraduate program.  Dr. Phelps has advised and supported nine graduate students, most through his academic appointment at UT.  His former graduate students and nine post-MS and post-doctorates are nearly equally divided among government, industry and faculty positions. 

Dr. Phelps provides no-cost assistance to NSF, as he is employed by ORNL, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center that normally does not seek NSF funding.  His no-cost assistance to past workshops (2000-2002) and this REU draws from three years of field experience for the NSF-Witwatersrand Deep Microbiology Project, and his availability has been provided in part by the collaborative spirit of DOE-Office of Science-OBER, by ORNL, and by personal leaves.  He donates time to serve on NSF panels including the U. S. Science Advisory Committee (USSAC) for the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) as it transitions into the international Ocean Drilling Program (IODP). 

Dr. Phelps also served on the ODP Deep biosphere planning group and as a liaison to the Gas Hydrates planning groups (1996-2000).  Dr. Phelps has authored 100+ papers in basic and applied aspects of microbiology related to subsurface or extreme environments.  He and Dr. Pfiffner and others received a 1996 R&D 100 Award for PHOster, a biostimulation process licensed by more than 30 bioremediation companies. Dr. Phelps has been awarded two patents with others pending.  Dr. Phelps has been the PI for more than a dozen DOE-sponsored multi-year projects in subsurface microbiology, bioremediation, carbon sequestration, and gas hydrates research.