J. Wesley Hines, the current interim vice chancellor for research at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a nuclear engineering professor, has been appointed head of the UT Knoxville Department of Nuclear Engineering.
Hines will assume the department head role on or before January 1, 2012, once the university has concluded a successful national search for a permanent vice chancellor for research. Hines was named the interim vice chancellor for research in 2010. He previously served as the interim associate dean for research and technology for the UT Knoxville College of Engineering from 2008 to 2009.
Hines attended the Naval Nuclear Power School in Orlando, Florida in 1986 and worked as a US Naval Officer on naval nuclear submarines from 1987 to 1990. He started his career at UT Knoxville in the nuclear engineering department in 1995 as a research assistant professor. In 2005, Hines was promoted to professor in the nuclear engineering department.
Hines has earned numerous recognitions from the university and the College of Engineering, including the Chancellor’s Research Award in 2007, the COE Research Fellow Award in 2006, the Moses E. and Mayme Brooks Distinguished Professor Award in 2005, the College of Engineering Teaching Fellow Award in 2005, and the Allen & Hoshall Engineering Faculty Award in 2002.
Hines’s research areas include applied artificial intelligence, surveillance and diagnostics, instrumentation and controls, modeling and simulation, and maintenance and reliability engineering. He currently serves as the director of the college’s Reliability and Maintainability Engineering Program, which offers an interdepartmental MS degree in reliability and maintainability engineering through a joint relationship between the engineering college and the Department of Statistics, Operations and Management Science.
Hines will succeed H.L. (Lee) Dodds, who will continue as department head until the vice chancellor search is successfully concluded. Dodds, who has been an nuclear engineering faculty member for thirty-five years—including fifteen years serving as the nuclear engineering department head—plans to retire December 31, 2011. The nuclear engineering department is currently ranked ninth in the nation by U.S. News and World Report and has experienced dramatic increases in enrollment due to renewed interest in the nuclear engineering profession.
Hines received a BS in electrical engineering from Ohio University, Athens, in 1985, an MS in nuclear engineering and an MBA from Ohio State University in 1992, and a PhD in nuclear engineering from Ohio State University in 1994.