Gourlay

Berkeley Lab Director Steve Chu named Steve Gourlay director of the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division (AFRD) last Friday afternoon in the Building 50 auditorium. Gourlay, an AFRD scientist since 1997, has been acting director of the division since January, when Bill Barletta resigned after 12 years as AFRD director to head the U.S. Particle Accelerator School at Fermilab. Before becoming AFRD director, Gourlay was head of Berkeley Lab's Superconducting Magnet Program and the magnet development component of the U.S. Large Hadron Collider Accelerator Research Program. "I look forward to working with extremely talented people in a very diverse division that is involved in a wide range of research," said Gourlay to fellow AFRD members at the Friday event.

From left, Director Chu, Congressman Mike Honda, Tof Carim (DOE), Foundry Director Carolyn Bertozzi, former ALS director Daniel Chemla, and Sunne McPeak (State of CA).

'Cauldron' of Discovery
Gets Its Official Tribute

An especially proud contingent of special guests — including Berkeley Lab Director Steve Chu, State cabinet official Sunne McPeak, U.S. Rep. Mike Honda, and nanoscience pioneer Daniel Chemla — assembled before the dramatic Bay-wide view of the fifth floor to dedicate the Lab's newest national user facility, the Molecular Foundry, on Friday. Honda said, "This building is like a cauldron where we can take basic scientific information and make things happen that will enhance our lives." The Foundry was dazzling in its architecture, its newly arrived lab and technical equipment, and its promises of world-changing discoveries in the nanoworld. Go here to read more about the Foundry and its future. A full story on the dedication will appear in the April 21 issue of The View.

From Bust to Boom,
With a Catch
By George Avalos

Led by a resilient "innovation economy," the Bay Area has rebounded from the dot-com cataclysm, according to a recent study. But the region's rally is imperiled by an erosion of its talent base, warned the authors of the report, titled "The Innovation Economy: Protecting the Talent Advantage." A number of public institutions bolster invention-minded entrepreneurs, the study cited, including Berkeley, Livermore, and Sandia National Laboratories, the NASA Ames Research Center, UC Berkeley and Stanford University. Full story. A PDF of the report is available here.