Thomas Mason

Thomas "Thom" Mason is a Canadian-American condensed-matter physicist who currently serves as the director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Prior to this appointment, he had been an executive at Battelle Memorial Institute from 2017–2018, and the director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2007–2017.

Mason became director at Los Alamos along with other changes at the laboratory. In June, 2018, the National Nuclear Security Administration, headed by Lisa Gordon-Hagerty, announced that it had awarded an agency, called Triad National Security LLC,the $25 billion contract for security of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Triad is a consortium made of Battelle Memorial Institute, the University of California System and the Texas A&M University System. Other partners on the Triad team include: Fluor Federal Services, Huntington Ingalls Industries/Stoller Newport News, Longenecker & Associates, TechSource, Strategic Management Solutions and Merrick & Company.)

Triad replaced the former Los Alamos National Security. The announcement of this action occurred on June 8, with notifying on July 5, 2018. The contract includes a five-year base with five one-year options, for a total of 10 years if all options are exercised. The estimated value of the contract is $2.5 billion annually.

With this contract came the appointment of Thomas Mason on November 1, 2018.

Mason was born in the City of Lakes, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, in Halifax, Nova Scotia of Canada. His father was a geophysicist who worked at a Canadian government research lab called the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, and his mother a biochemist, was working at the Dalhousie University in Halifax.