Dr. Kovac is married to Susan Davis Kovac, an attorney who is Area Legal Counsel for the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. They have two children, Peter, a junior at Oberlin College majoring in mathematics and, and Rachel, a senior at Bearden High School in Knoxville. Dr. Kovac is also an accomplished soccer referee, having officiated more than 1,500 games in the past 20 years at the youth, high school, college, amateur, and professional levels. He is active in the community, serving on the board of directors of Knoxville Interfaith Network, a coalition of congregations dedicated to social justice.

G. Leah Dever

Ms. G. Leah Dever was named manager of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE's) Oak Ridge Operations (ORO) in July 1999. She is responsible for a broad range of research and development (R&D) programs related to nuclear, fossil, and other energy initiatives with facilities located in Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, and Virginia.

Ms. Dever is also responsible for support for the national defense, including dismantlement of nuclear weapons components; environmental restoration and waste management; technology transfer; Work for Other Federal Agencies; education; and training.

Ms. Dever has over 22 years experience in environmental planning and engineering in both the private and federal government sectors. Over the last 13 years, she has been a pioneer in DOE’s goal to restore the environment at its old facilities and make itself the model for contemporary industrial practice for environmental protection.

Ms. Dever began her Federal career as an environmental scientist at DOE Headquarters. There she guided the department’s operations offices at Albuquerque, Idaho, Nevada, Oak Ridge, Richland, Rocky Flats, and Oakland through the difficult process of bringing their facilities into compliance with contemporary environmental law and practice. Throughout the DOE complex, Ms. Dever is known for her open inclusive management style and her commitment to working closely with community leaders.

Prior to joining DOE, Ms. Dever served as an environmental scientist with several environmental engineering and planning companies where she assessed the impacts of large construction projects, evaluated applicability of environmental laws to federal facilities, and prepared National Environmental Policy Act reports and hazardous waste permit applications. In addition, she managed the integrated master schedule for the Army’s chemical agent disposal project on Johnston Island.

A native of rural Pennsylvania, Ms. Dever received a bachelor of arts in biology from Thiel College in 1974 and a master of science in biology/ecology from Pennsylvania State University in 1977. Ms. Dever lives in Oak Ridge.

Dr. Lauri Sammartano is an assistant professor in the Biology Department and Women’s Studies Program at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. She is currently on sabbatical leave and is working with Dr. C.H. Winston Chen’s research group in the Life Sciences Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She received her B.A. in biology from St. Mary’s College (Winona, MN) and her Ph.D. from the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) in genetics and development. Her graduate research involved investigating the role of reactive oxygen species in UV-A mediated inactivation of Escherichia coli.

Dr. Sammartano has ten year’s teaching experience at liberal arts colleges. She has been at St. Olaf College for the past seven years. She teaches Intermediate Genetics, Molecular Biology and Biology of Women. She has also supervised independent study in the areas of cultural perceptions of menstruation, smoking habits of college women with eating disorders, the history of midwifery in the United States, among others. She has also taught Human Biology in the Professional Exploration Program for five years. PEP is an intense summer program for underrepresented first year students. Dr. Sammartano is deeply committed to science education for women and minority students and feels compelled to work towards a "DNA literate" society.

Leigh Ann Pennington

Ms. Leigh Ann Pennington is a statistician/economist with expertise in science and technology workforce issues and science and engineering academic programs. She has 10 years of experience in survey research and statistical analysis related to assessment of educational programs and labor market trends and serves as a lead investigator on applied research and data assessment projects, providing lead support in the areas of quantitative modeling and statistical techniques.

Since 1992, Ms. Pennington has served as a statistical analyst for the management of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program, utilizing statistical methods to improve application review efficiency. She has also served as the team leader for the development and implementation of a national database to collect information for the Department of Energy (DOE) on science education program participants, and has been involved in precollege summer activities funded by the NSF. In past years, she has been involved in several evaluation efforts for DOE science education programs, specifically in the statistical analysis of data available from the programs themselves, as well as utilizing other national databases on scientific personnel for comparison groups. She has worked extensively with the data files from surveys that make up the Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT), sponsored by the NSF, and with other large national databases on occupations and employment maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ms. Pennington has an M.A. and A.B.D. in economics from Vanderbilt University and a B.A. in economics and mathematics from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Claudia J. Rawn

Dr. Claudia J. Rawn is a Research Staff Scientist in the Metals and Ceramics Division. She works at the Diffraction User Center in the High Temperature Materials Laboratory located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  She uses neutron and X-ray diffraction to study the structures of a variety of materials with possible energy applications. Very often, her work involves collaboration with researchers from industry, other federal laboratories, and academia.

Dr. Rawn obtained her B.S. in materials science in materials engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in1986, her M.S. in chemistry from George Mason University in1991, and her Ph.D. in materials science from the University of Arizona, Tucson in 1995.  Before coming to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, she held positions as a materials research engineer in the Ceramics Division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and as a postdoc working on ceramic materials at the "Jozef Stefan" Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Dr. Rawn was a contributing editor to Phase Diagrams for Ceramists from1992 to 1994.  She was the 1993/1994 recipient of the University of Arizona's Department of Materials Science and Engineering Departmental Scholarship based on academic merit, and has been nominated for the 1999 Robert L. Coble Award for Young Scholars.  She is a member of the American Crystallographic Association, the American Ceramic Society, and the Neutron Scattering Society of America.

Dr. Celvia S. Dixon is the president of C.D Enterprises-FamFocu$. Her business focuses on issues that impact family finances. Dixon is also an associate professor at the University of Tennessee, where she teaches in the College of Human Ecology and serves as the associate director for the African American Achievers Program. She received her B.S. from Central Michigan University, her M.S. from Louisiana State University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Dixon has a diverse background. She taught secondary education in the Michigan public school system and served as a university faculty member in Louisiana, Alabama, Minnesota, and Tennessee. She has developed financial education materials and provided training to Bankruptcy Trustees across the nation, the Department of the Army, financial counselors in Canada, and to many educational, civic, and religious organizations. Recently, Dr. Dixon published her first book, Financial Facts for Females.

She is committed to programs and opportunities that improve the quality of life for individuals and families. Her colleagues describe her as an exciting and enthusiastic teacher and speaker. Dr. Dixon is married and has one daughter.

Dr. Lynne E. Parker is a senior research staff member and group leader of the Computational Intelligence Group in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. She received her Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science with a minor in brain and cognitive sciences.  She received her B.S. degree in computer science with a minor in mathematics from Tennessee Technological University, and her M.S. degree in computer science from the University of Tennessee, with a thesis on the topic of mobile robot navigation. She held previous positions as a systems analyst with Martin Marietta Energy Systems, a researcher with the Center for Engineering Science Advanced Research (CESAR) at ORNL, and a researcher in the Artificial Intelligence Center at Hughes Research Laboratory.

Dr. Parker’s research interests include cooperative agents, mobile robotics, situated agent architectures, robot learning, and brain and cognitive sciences.  She is a leader in her field and is frequently invited to speak at international conferences, workshops, and universities. She is a member of IEEE, ACM, AAAI, and Sigma Xi, serves on numerous international conference program committees, and is a guest co-editor of a special issue of the Autonomous Robots journal on the topic of Heterogeneous Multi-Robot Cooperation, to be published in early 2000.  Dr. Parker’s activities have also included teaching a university course on robotics and mentoring student interns at ORNL.

Dr. Parker has recently been awarded the prestigious DOE Office of Science Early Career Scientist Award, and is currently nominated for the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, for her research in cooperative robotics.

Dr. Dabney K. Johnson is a senior staff scientist and section head in Mammalian Genetics and Development in the Life Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Johnson's laboratory analyzes the molecular and functional consequences of induced germ-line mutations on obvious and subtle whole-organism phenotypes in the mouse.

The primary focus for the laboratory is on the molecular and functional analysis of germ-line mutations and complex phenotypes generated by our phenotype-based mouse mutagenesis core program. Studies are designed to pair specific genes with mutant phenotypes. Screening assays are developed and employed to detect behavioral, biochemical, and morphological mutations in mice, and then clone, characterize, and manipulate genes associated with mutant phenotypes that alter function at the organismal level. Students and other investigators perform detailed analysis of the functional consequences of DNA alterations in individual gene sequences, and on how those mutations impact entire biological pathways over the lifespan of the animal.

Dr. Johnson received her Ph.D. in molecular genetics in the Mammalian Genetics program at ORNL from the University of Tennessee Graduate School for Biomedical Sciences in May of 1990. After graduating in 1967 with a B.S. in biology from Salem College, Winston-Salem, NC, and an M.S. in biology in 1968 from Emory University in Atlanta, she raised a family while working in quality control/microbiology for a pharmaceutical company and then as a cytogeneticist and laboratory supervisor at the University of Tennessee Birth Defects Center.

Dr. Camille Jones

Dr. Camille Jones is a postdoctoral research associate in the Surface Processing and Mechanics Group of the Metals and Ceramics Division at ORNL. She obtained her B.S. in chemistry from Butler University in 1990. After graduation, she worked for four years at Eli Lilly and Company, a pharmaceutical company in Indianapolis, Ind., as an analytical chemist developing quantitative analytical methods for drug candidates in clinical trials. She left Eli Lilly in 1995 to attend graduate school, and obtained her Ph.D. in physical chemistry at the University of Toledo in 1999. Her doctoral research was in the structure and thermodynamics of high-temperature condensed-phase transformations in transition-metal sulfides, studied in situ with neutron diffraction.

At ORNL, Dr. Jones is using computational thermodynamics to study corrosion of metals in contact with molten salts and aqueous salt solutions. Her other areas of research include development of computer codes for visualization of three-dimensional phase diagrams, application of computational thermodynamics to vapor deposition of coatings, and a technique for simultaneous time-resolved neutron diffraction and mass spectrometry. She is a member of Sigma Xi, Materials Research Society, and Neutron Scattering Society of America.

Ms. Davidson has worked in computer security since 1992, first at the Y-12 Plant and since 1997 at ORNL. Her current responsibilities include performing  security and vulnerability analysis of network connected computers, evaluating analysis and assessment tools, identifying and investigating security problems, and developing policy guidance based security analysis. Her research interests include computer forensic tools and techniques and vulnerability analysis of Microsoft operating systems such as Windows NT.