Innovation Valley

The Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation Valley

has technology companies flocking to the Knoxville area due to its highly skilled workforce, generous federal and state incentives, access to the superlative incubator environment for various specific types of scientific research, and magnificent quality of life.

Oak Ridge's Role in Innovation-Valley

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the largest energy and science laboratory in the U.S. Department of Energy and was originally set up as part of the top secret Manhattan Project to determine methods to separate plutonium for use in nuclear weapons. Becoming an integral part of the Department of Energy in the 1970s, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's mission evolved to include strategies and technologies for the nation's energy supply.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory has more than 4,200 personnel and administers and an annual budget of over $1.2 billion. The major mission roles over and above national security are energy and engineering sciences, physical sciences, biological and environmental sciences, computing and computational sciences, and new technologies.

Recent Developments in the Knoxville-Oak Ridge Innovation-Valley

Innovation-Valley is leading the nation's nanotechnology innovation race with Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s $65 million Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS) and $1.4 billion Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) as well as the $72 million Center for Computational Sciences and the recent $65 million upgrade to the High Flux Isotope Reactor.

The Oak Ridge National Laboratory is involved in a $350 million project to build a state of the art campus in a special combination of federal, state, and private funds to finance the construction of thirteen innovative facilities,including the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, the Advanced Microscopy Laboratory, the Laboratory for Comparative and Functional Genomics, the Office of Science’s Leadership Computing Facility for unclassified high-performance computing, and the joint institutes for biological sciences, computational sciences, and neutron sciences funded by the state of Tennessee.

Innovation-Valley has over $2 billion in investments into what is swiftly becoming the world's leading nanoscience research center. There are various programs to help seed the future of nanotechnology in the Knoxville Oak Ridge area, including government grants, incubator space and a newly introduced East Tennessee Nano Initiative.