Eric O’Quinn

Research Assistant Professor

Biography

CV (Curriculum Vitae)

Eric C. O'Quinn is a Research Assistant Professor in the DISMAT group, specializing in the characterization of materials under extreme conditions, including high temperatures, radiation, and mechanical stress. He received his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Tennessee in 2019, where he also completed his postdoctoral research and currently holds a faculty position. Prior to that, he was a Graduate Research Fellow at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has published articles in high-impact journals on topics such as radiation-induced disorder in complex oxides and the use of advanced characterization techniques to understand material behavior.

Research

O’Quinn’s research interests cover the structure, energetics, and properties of disordered materials, with a particular emphasis on materials under extreme conditions, such as those relevant to the nuclear fuel cycle. Projects include the study of the fundamental physics of radiation-matter interactions, the stability of energy materials under highly ionizing radiation, and the use of neutron scattering approaches to investigate materials far from equilibrium. See his recent talk on this subject here.

Education

PhD, Nuclear Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2019

BSc, Physics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 2011

Professional Service

• Member of American Nuclear Society
• Member of American Crystallographic Association
• Peer reviewer for several journals including Journal of Applied Physics, Chemistry of Materials, and Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research

Awards and Recognitions

• Navrotsky Award for Experimental Thermodynamics of Solids (2023)
  Co-author of “Radiation Damage and Thermal Annealing in Tunnel Structured Hollandite Materials”
  The American Ceramic Society
• Research Faculty Excellence Award (2023)
  Nuclear Engineering Department – University of Tennessee
• Outstanding Ph.D. Student (2019)
  Nuclear Engineering Department – University of Tennessee
• Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) Fellowship (2018)
  Department of Energy Office of Science
• Innovations in Nuclear Technology Research & Development Award (2018)
  US Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Technology

Publications

To view a complete list of O’Quinn’s peer-reviewed publications, view his Google Scholar profile.

Selected work:

• E.C. O’Quinn, K.E. Sickafus, R.C. Ewing, G. Baldinozzi, J.C. Neuefeind, M.G. Tucker, A.F. Fuentes, D. Drey, M.K. Lang, Predicting short-range order and correlated phenomena in disordered crystalline materials, Science Advances 6 (2020) 1–8.
• E.C. O’Quinn, J. Shamblin, B. Perlov, R.C. Ewing, J. Neuefeind, M. Feygenson, I. Gussev, M. Lang, Inversion in Mg_{1– x}Ni_xAl₂O₄ Spinel: New Insight into Local Structure, Journal of the American Chemical Society 139 (2017) 10395–10402.
• E.C. O’Quinn, C.L. Tracy, W.F. Cureton, R. Sachan, J.C. Neuefeind, C. Trautmann, M.K. Lang, Multi-scale investigation of heterogeneous swift heavy ion tracks in stannate pyrochlore, Journal of Material Chemistry A 9 (2021) 16982–16997.
• E.C. O’Quinn, J.L. Bishop, R. Sherrod, J. Neuefeind, S.M. Montemayor, A.F. Fuentes, M. Lang, Advanced characterization technique for mechanochemically synthesized materials: neutron total scattering analysis, Journal of Materials Science 53 (2018) 13400–13410.
• E.C. O’Quinn, D.L. Drey, M.K. Lang, Defining the Structural Stability Field of Disordered Fluorite Oxides, Frontiers in Chemistry 9 (2021) 673.
• J. Shamblin, C.L. Tracy, R.I. Palomares, E.C. O’Quinn, R.C. Ewing, J. Neuefeind, M. Feygenson, J. Behrens, C. Trautmann, M. Lang, Similar local order in disordered fluorite and aperiodic pyrochlore structures, Acta Materialia 144 (2018) 60–67.
• R. Sherrod & E.C. O’Quinn, I.M. Gussev, C. Overstreet, J. Neuefeind, M.K. Lang, Comparison of short-range order in irradiated dysprosium titanates, Nature Materials Degradation 5 (2021) 19.
• D.L. Drey, E.C. O’Quinn, T. Subramani, K. Lilova, G. Baldinozzi, I.M. Gussev, A.F. Fuentes, J.C. Neuefeind, M. Everett, D. Sprouster, A. Navrotsky, R.C. Ewing, M. Lang, Disorder in Ho2Ti2−xZrxO7: pyrochlore to defect fluorite solid solution series, RSC Advances 10 (2020) 34632–34650.
• C.K. Chung, J. Shamblin, E.C. O’Quinn, A. Shelyug, I. Gussev, M. Lang, A. Navrotsky, Thermodynamic and structural evolution of Dy₂Ti₂O₇ pyrochlore after swift heavy ion irradiation, Acta Materialia 145 (2018) 227–234.
• I.M. Gussev, E.C. O’Quinn, M. Tucker, R.C. Ewing, C. Overstreet, J. Neuefeind, M. Everett, Q. Zhang, D. Sprouster, D. Olds, G. Baldinozzi, M. Lang, Systematic study of short- and long-range correlations in RE3TaO7 weberite-type compounds by neutron total scattering and X-ray diffraction, Journal of Material Chemistry A 11 (2023) 8886–8903.