Carlos Rodriguez Flores

Scientific Glass Technology (A.A.S.), 2009

Alumni Profile: Carlos Rodriguez Flores
June 26, 2025

When Carlos Rodriguez Flores visited SCC during his senior year at Penns Grove High School, he knew he wanted to pursue a career-oriented degree.  When the Student Services advisor took him to the Glass Center (now the Nursing Center next to Tillis Hall), he was hooked. 

“I was sold as soon as I saw the students working with glass,” recalled Carlos, Scientific Glass Technology (SGT) Class of 2009, “and I’ve loved my decision ever since!”

He is indebted to the SCC glass faculty and staff as he worked toward his associate degree. “They were the most instrumental because I owe my success to the help and professionalism from everyone involved!

“I’d say my proudest moment at SCC was graduating and making my parents proud,” said Carlos, who would ride his bike about five miles to campus from his family’s home. 

Carlos worked at Alpha Resources in Stevensville, Mich. with his best friend and fellow SCC alumnus John Fykse before joining the prestigious Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in Tennessee in November 2016.   “I had been working at a quartz fabrication company and had extensive experience building complicated quartz apparatus,” Carlos said.  

“Landing a job at ORNL was a career goal since I learned about it at SCC when Jason Craig (now a co-worker) got a job there in 2007,” he said. 

“SCC was critical for my job at ORNL by making chemistry and physics crucial to graduate. That slight understanding of both subjects makes it easier to communicate with my customers on a daily basis,” he said.                

His Oak Ridge clients are chemists, physicists and engineers. “My current position is being everything all at once, sitting down with customers and working on a design that would best suit their needs, ordering the materials we need (such as glass and tools) and sometimes just modifying something they already have.” 

In August 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy featured Oak Ridge in an article titled, National Lab Creates Glass Test Cell to Peek Inside Molten Salt Reactors.  “I helped design and create the custom quartz cell,” said Carlos, who was pictured using a blowtorch to fabricate a glass test cell for a molten salt visualization experiment.  https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/national-lab-creates-glass-test-cell-peek-inside-molten-salt-reactors

“It was very challenging, to say the least,” continued Carlos, “but once I saw it in action and the happy faces of the researchers, it brought me joy and a sense of accomplishment!” 

Carlos shared that he looks forward to the daily challenge of a scientific glassblower. “What kind of apparatus am I going to produce that day and what difference is it going to make in the science and most importantly what impact is it going to have in the community?”