Todd Combs

Dr. Todd Combs is the associate laboratory director for Idaho National Laboratory’s Energy and Environment Science & Technology Directorate, where he manages 250+ research staff focused on advanced transportation, clean energy integration, advanced manufacturing, and environmental issues.

Before joining INL, Combs served as the director of the Global Security Sciences Division at Argonne National Laboratory, where he led a multidisciplinary research team of over 200 that found solutions to protect against, mitigate, respond to, and recover from a wide spectrum of national and global security threats. He also served nearly 14 months as Argonne’s interim associate laboratory director for Energy and Global Security. He led the applied R&D organization of over 800 people, addressing domestic and global sustainable energy and security issues. In this role, he oversaw research and operational activities of the energy systems, nuclear engineering, and global security sciences division.

Combs began his DOE laboratory career in 2008 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as an operations research scientist. He left for Argonne in 2012 while serving as group leader for Transportation Planning and Decision Science. His research has included energy systems modeling and analysis for DOE, most recently related to critical materials supply chains, as well as the application of modeling and simulation to national and homeland security issues for the departments of Defense and Homeland Security.

Combs earned his doctorate in operations research and master’s degree in operations analysis from the Air Force Institute of Technology and is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, his military experience includes assignments at the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the Air Force Studies and Analyses Agency. He is a member of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) and the Military Operations Research Society (MORS).