Michelle Buchanan is the Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In this role she is responsible for the Chemical Sciences, Material Science and Technology, and the Physics divisions; the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences; and the Basic Energy Sciences Program. Prior to assuming this position in November 2004, she served as the Director of the Chemical Sciences Division from October 2000 to November 2004. She served as Associate Director of the Life Sciences Division from January 1999 to September 2000. She initiated the Center for Structural Molecular Biology at ORNL, serving as Director from 1999 to 2003, and served as Group Leader for the Organic and Biological Mass Spectrometry group in the Chemical and Analytical Sciences Division (now the Chemical Sciences Division) from 1986 to 1999. She is an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemistry and is on the faculty of the Genome Science and Technology Program at the University of Tennessee. She is also Director of the Center for Molecular Cellular Systems, which is a multi-institution program for the identification and characterization of microbial protein complexes.
She has over 150 scientific publications and reports, holds two patents, and was editor of a book on Fourier transform mass spectrometry. She was awarded an R&D 100 Award in 1986; ORNL Technical Achievement Awards in 1985, 1989, and 1993; UT-Battelle Leadership Award in 2000; UT-Battelle Excellence Award in 2002; and Knoxville YWCA Science and Technology Award in 2003. She currently serves as a Councilor for the Division of Analytical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (DAC ACS) and is a member of the International Affairs Committee of the ACS. She has also served as treasurer for DAC ACS, treasurer for the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and chair of the East Tennessee Section of the ACS. She was North American Editor of Biological Mass Spectrometry, and has served on the editorial boards of Analytical Chemistry, Organic Mass Spectrometry, Journal of Mass Spectrometry, Biological and Environmental Mass Spectrometry, and Frensenius’ Journal of Analytical Chemistry. She currently serves on the advisory boards of the NIH Mass Spectrometry Resource at Boston University, the Biotechnology Advisory Committee at Sandia National Laboratories, and the Review Committee for the Structural Biology Program at UCLA.
B.S., Chemistry, University of Kansas
Ph.D., Analytical Chemistry, University of Wisconsin-Madison