Dr. Thom Mason will step down as director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory effective July 1, 2017, exactly 10 years after becoming director of the nation’s largest science and energy laboratory. Mason will take on a new role as Senior Vice President for Laboratory Operations at Battelle in Columbus, Ohio. Battelle, in partnership with the University of Tennessee, has managed and operated ORNL for the U.S. Department of Energy since April 2000. Mason is an experimental condensed matter physicist by training and came to ORNL in 1998 to work on the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), a facility that was under construction to serve scientists worldwide. He soon assumed responsibility for completion of the $1.4 billion project.