I am delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Kem E. Robinson as the Division Director of the Engineering Division, effective immediately. He has been serving as Acting Division Director since September of 2003, when Jim Triplett stepped down. Dr. Robinson will continue to have responsibility for the Laboratory’s Project Management Office.

Dr. Robinson received the B.S. degree in physics from Brigham Young University in 1978 and the Ph.D. degree in 1984 from Stanford University. His area of research is experimental free-electron laser (FEL) development, and he worked on the first operational storage ring FEL in Orsay, France. Before coming to LBNL, he spent more than ten years with STI Optronics, Inc., a Bellevue, Washington R&D firm, eventually becoming Vice President of Technology Development. While there he was responsible for the development of insertion devices used for synchrotron radiation centers and free-electron lasers as well as for compact mass spectrometer magnets designed for use by NASA on a Mars rover.

Dr. Robinson joined the Laboratory in 1999 as the Deputy for General Sciences Projects. In 2000 he was named Principal Division Deputy of the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, and since 2001 he has served as the Laboratory’s Project Management Officer.

We at Berkeley Lab are particularly fortunate to have someone of Dr. Robinson’s breadth of experience in project management and technology development as the leader of our Engineering programs. Since he began as Acting Division Director Dr. Robinson has implemented many of the recommendations made by the Laboratory’s Engineering Task Force, including refocusing the strategic direction toward strong partnerships with the scientific divisions. I greatly appreciate his contributions, and I look forward to his leadership going into the future.

Charles V. Shank