Task Leaders: Sandy McLaughlin

Samuel B. McLaughlin is a Research Professor with the University of Tennessee and a former Senior Research Scientist with the Ecosystem Studies Section of the Environmental Sciences Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Dr. McLaughlin received his Ph.D. from Duke University in 1970 in tree physiology. He worked with the Tennessee Valley Authority in the Division of Environmental Planning from 1970 until 1974 when he joined ORNL as a Research Staff Member. His research activities at ORNL have focused principally around developing and testing techniques for evaluating responses of crops and forest trees to natural and anthropogenic sources of environmental stress. He has twice served as a Group Leader in physiological ecology within the Division. Since 1991 he has worked with the Bioenergy Feedstock Development Program as a Herbaceous Crops Research Task Leader. During that time he helped to develop herbaceous energy crops as a source of renewable energy by leading a interdisciplinary, multi-institutional group which has focused primarily on switchgrass as a model species. His published analyses include life cycle and economic comparisons of costs and values of renewable fuels from switchgrass and fossil energy sources. He has gained both national and international recognition for his research on responses of eastern forest trees to atmospheric pollution and played an important role in both basic research and programmatic synthesis in the National Forest Response Program within the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program. He has served on two previous committees of the National Research Council: Committee on Monitoring and Assessing Trends in Acid Deposition (1983-1985) and Committee on Markers of Air Pollution Exposure in Trees (1987-1988) and received several awards for scientific achievement at ORNL. Dr. McLaughlin has authored more than 188 scientific publications, including 70 journal articles and 17 book chapters. Dr. McLaughlin retired from full time employment at ORNL on March 1, 2002. Since that time he had maintained field research projects with the US Forest Service, the National Park Service, while continuing synthesis and publication activities with the Bioenergy Feedstock Development Program at ORNL.