Sanseverino named interim MPEX project director

August 15, 2024

• Fusion Energy

John Sanseverino has been selected as interim project director for the Materials Plasma Exposure eXperiment, or MPEX, at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

MPEX is a one-of-a-kind linear plasma device, currently under construction at ORNL, that will allow researchers to replicate the extreme heat flux and magnetic forces inside a fusion reactor and investigate the most pressing questions in plasma-material interactions.

John joined MPEX as project manager in 2019, where he was responsible for the development of the cost, schedule and risk register, reporting monthly project status to sponsors and lab leadership, and coordinating all critical decision and design reviews. In 2023, John was recruited by lab leadership to be the project director for the Neutron Electric Dipole Moment Experiment in the Physics Division. He returned to MPEX in December 2023 as the deputy project director.

John formerly served as project manager for several organizations at ORNL, including the Climate Change Science Institute and the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate, where he provided support for the INCITE program and the acquisition of the Frontier supercomputer.

Prior to ORNL, John was director of programs for the Tennessee Solar Institute, a research associate professor and managing director for the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Tennessee, and the co-founder of two start-up ventures. He holds a doctorate in molecular biology from Lehigh University and is a certified Project Management Professional.'

UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science. - Sean Simoneau