Inside The Innovations

Saad Elorfi

Saad Elorfi

Master Technician

Spallation Neutron Source

Saad Elorfi is the Master Technician with the low-temperature and magnet sample environment team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). When he’s not making sure magnetic and cryogenic equipment at the Spallation Neutron Source is running smoothly, he likes watching sports and playing soccer with his son. Saad has worked at ORNL since 2007.

I help maintain the sample environments where researchers place their samples in preparation for neutron experiments. I’m also responsible for maintaining our inventory of cryogenics, meaning all of the liquid nitrogen, liquid helium, and the other inert gases we use in our equipment to make them run. My colleagues and I even developed a new system for automatically delivering liquid helium to instruments called LHeAF, which we recently patented.”

“I learn a lot from people who are different than me, who have different ways of approaching problems and creating solutions. Getting to work with those different mindsets is a pleasure. And we’re all united by ORNL’s culture, the idea that we’re here to produce extraordinary—yet safe—science.”

–Saad Elorfi