William Shelton, Ph.D.
Associate Director, WR Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Molecular Science Computing Divisionhttp://emslbios.pnl.gov/id/shelton_wa Updated: February 7, 2013
Current Activities and Projects
Dr. William A. Shelton is the Associate Director of EMSL—the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. His primary responsibility is to lead the molecular sciences computing at EMSL in achieving its vision of integrating its full range of capabilities with computation including both numerical and data intensive computing. This will enable EMSL to reach its goal of being a premier scientific user facility for the Department of Energy by ensuring that EMSL develops and provides transformational computational and experimental resources along with recognized teams of researchers to provide a high level of expertise and collaboration to the scientific user community and conducts research that is focused on critical scientific issues.
Research Interests
Dr. Shelton is nationally recognized for his contributions in the field of computational materials and chemical sciences where he has developed methods for application on massively parallel architectures. The main body of his work is in the general areas of alloy theory and surface science where he has worked on incorporating magnetic and chemical disorder including point defects, such as vacancies and antisites in both materials and chemistry. Most of Dr. Shelton’s work has been in collaboration with many experimental groups where the iteration between theory and experiment has lead to interesting insights in several areas of research. Dr. Shelton has authored over a hundred peer-reviewed papers and he has been an invited speaker at national and international meetings.
Past Experience
Dr. Shelton began his career in 1990 as National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Postdoctoral fellow in the Complex Systems Theory Group at the Naval Research Laboratory. He then joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a staff scientist in 1992. Dr. Shelton was a group leader of the Computational Condensed Matter Physics group until 2001 and a Distinguished Senior Research Staff member of the Computational Chemical Sciences group prior to coming to EMSL in September 2010. He also spent a year during his Ph.D. studies at the University of Bristol in Bristol, England working with Professor B. Gyorffy.
Education
1989 Ph.D. Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, University of Cincinnati.
1983 B.S. Physics, University of Cincinnati.
Awards, Honors, & Appointments
IEEE Gordon Bell Award, 2001 (Honorable Mention)
IEEE Gordon Bell Award, 1998
Computerworld Smithsonian Award, 2000
Supercomputing ’96 High Performance Computing Challenge Award, 1996
Supercomputing ’95 High Performance Computing Challenge Award, 1995
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Scientific Achievement Award, 1995
Intel Supercomputer Systems Division Recognition Award, 1994
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Scientific Achievement Award 1994
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Division Director’s Award 1993
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Scientific Achievement Award 1991
National Academy of Sciences NRC Post Doctoral Fellow, 1990
IEEE Gordon Bell Award, 1990
Cray Research Gigaflop Award, 1990
