Johney Green Jr. Begins Tenure as Laboratory Director at SRNL
In December, Johney Green Jr. was selected by Battelle Savannah River Alliance, LLC., to serve as the Laboratory Director at Savannah River National Laboratory. Green began his tenure at SRNL Jan. 6, 2025. Prior to joining SRNL, Green served as the Associate Laboratory Director for mechanical and thermal engineering sciences at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“We are thrilled to have Johney become the new leader of SRNL,” said Juan Alvarez, Battelle’s Executive Vice President for National Laboratory Management & Operations. “We are confident that he is the right person to lead this exceptional national asset with a legacy of delivering impactful solutions for environmental, energy and security challenges.”
At NREL, Green oversaw transportation, buildings, wind, water, geothermal, advanced manufacturing, concentrating solar power and Arctic research programs, which encompass a portfolio of more than $300 million and a workforce of about 750.
“I am honored and humbled by the opportunity to join the SRNL community and work alongside our dedicated staff and regional university partners,” said Green. “Together, we will drive innovation, enhance the laboratory’s capabilities, and expand its contributions to national security, environmental sustainability and energy resilience for the benefit of the nation.”
Among his accomplishments at NREL, Green transformed the lab’s wind site into the Flatirons Campus and transitioned the campus from a single-program wind research site to a multiprogram research campus that is the foundational experimental platform for the DOE’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) initiative.
Prior to his time at NREL, Green held several leadership roles at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he served as director of the Energy and Transportation Science Division and group leader for fuels, engines, and emissions research. Green managed a broad science and technology portfolio and user facilities that made significant science and engineering advances in building technologies; sustainable industrial and manufacturing processes; fuels, engines, emissions, and transportation analysis; and vehicle systems integration. During his tenure as a division director, ORNL developed the Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) demonstration project, a model of innovative vehicle-to-grid integration technologies and next-generation manufacturing processes.
Johney Green Jr, Ph.D.
Early in his career, Green conducted combustion research to stabilize gasoline engine operation under extreme conditions. In the course of that research, he joined a team working with Ford Motor Co., seeking ways to simultaneously extend exhaust gas recirculation limits in diesel engines and reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions. He continued this collaboration as a visiting scientist at Ford’s Scientific Research Laboratory, conducting modeling and experimental research for advanced diesel engines designed for light-duty vehicles. On assignment to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Technologies Office, Green also served as technical coordinator for the 21st Century Truck Partnership. He also contributed to a dozen of ORNL’s 150-plus top scientific discoveries.
Green is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an SAE International fellow. He serves on the Defense Science Board and several advisory boards including those at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Memphis. Green is also the former chairman of the board for the National GEM Consortium and has been an invited participant in several National Academy of Engineering programs. Green has received several awards during his career and holds two U.S. patents in combustion science. Additionally, he has an h-index of 34 with more than 4,500 citations, is the lead or co-author of several technical publications, and has given many invited, keynote, and plenary presentations.
Green holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Memphis and a master’s and doctorate in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.