Rob Johnson to Manage Berkeley Lab Homeland Security Research and Engineering

"I am pleased to announce Rob Johnson as head of the Laboratory's Homeland Security Office.

"Bill Barletta, the Lab's Director of the AFRD Division, has until now provided essential leadership for the Laboratory's programs in homeland security, non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and intelligence. Bill has now left LBNL for Fermilab to head the U.S. Particle Accelerator School. With Bill's departure, Rob Johnson has agreed to  manage these activities and to serve as the Laboratory point of contact with the Department of Homeland Security, DOE's Office of Nonproliferation Research and Engineering, and other related agencies and offices. Rob has been handling day-to-day responsibilities for the Office since July 1, when Henry Rutkowski retired from the Lab.

"Rob is a senior program manager who knows the Laboratory well. He was the Assistant Division Director of AFRD and then Laboratory Assistant Deputy Director in the 1980s under Deputy Directors Hermann Grunder and Gerd Rosenblatt. He helped establish the Center for Particle Astrophysics at UC Berkeley and served as its Associate Director in 1989 before returning full time to LBNL in 1990 to head the Programmatic Initiatives Support Group under Deputy Director Pier Oddone. In 1996 he assumed additional Lab-wide responsibility as manager of Berkeley Lab's Washington, D.C. Projects Office.

"Rob's prior work at Berkeley Lab has been to connect the capabilities of Lab researchers to national scientific initiatives and to catalyze connections between the Lab and sponsoring agencies in Washington, D. C. I'm sure you will all join me in working with Rob to bring Lab capabilities to bear on the critically important scientific and technical challenges in homeland security and related areas."

Steve Chu