Harold Conner has been active in AIChE since he graduated from the Univ. of Tennessee in 1968. He has been actively engaged in the local sections of the Central Savannah River Area and Knoxville-Oak Ridge since the early 1970s. He has served AIChE for 26 years, most recently as Chair of the Management Div. in 2024 and Past Chair in 2025. Conner became a Fellow of AIChE in 2018 and received the AIChE Management Div. Award in 2022.
In 1964, he became the first Black cooperative engineering student in the Univ. of Tennessee System, and in 1968 he was the first Black student to graduate with a BS in chemical engineering from the Univ. of Tennessee. He earned his MS in chemical engineering in 1978 from the Univ. of Tennessee and his PhD in industrial and systems engineering from the Univ. of Alabama in Huntsville in 2013. He is a registered Professional Engineer (P.E.) in South Carolina and Tennessee.
Conner has six decades of experience with the U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration, working on multiple nuclear projects across various DOE sites. His roles have included Site Manager at the Oak Ridge K-25 Site; Executive Vice President for all three Uranium Gaseous Diffusion Plants located in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio; Nuclear Facility Restart Manager at the Y-12 National Security Complex; Chief Operations Officer at both the Idaho National Laboratory and the Savannah River Site; Associate Laboratory Director at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; and Nuclear Facilities Operations and Engineering Manager at UCOR in Oak Ridge, TN.
He has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, Alumni Professional Achievement Award; the Muddy Boot Award for meritorious service to the Oak Ridge community; the AIChE Management Div. Award; the Local Excellence Award from the American Museum of Science and Energy; and the DOE’s Secretary of Energy Award of Achievement.