The once-secret city of Oak Ridge, home to the Department of Energy’s largest national laboratory, is strengthening its link with Chattanooga with the opening today of an office at EPB.
The Oak Ridge National Lab office will go downtown in the city’s Innovation District, and business people and officials hope it will go a long way to unlocking collaboration and technology transfer.
U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., said he has long advocated connecting ORNL’s state-of-the-art technology assets with Chattanooga’s entrepreneurial strength.
The opening of the office, which will be the only one of its kind in Tennessee, will mark “a pivotal day for the Chattanooga area,” said Fleischmann, who led the ORNL effort.
Oak Ridge’s nickname of “The Secret City” comes from its establishment in 1942 as a production site for the Manhattan Project – the operation that developed the atomic bomb.