Fleming Taking Sabbatical;
Alivisatos Acting Deputy

Fleming

Berkeley Lab Director Steve Chu has announced that his Deputy Director, Graham Fleming, will step down to take “a long overdue and well-earned” sabbatical. Associate Laboratory Director and Materials Sciences Division Director Paul Alivisatos will serve as acting Deputy beginning Dec. 1. “Graham has helped raise the scientific standard across the Lab,” Chu said. “As a result of his hard work, LBNL is a stronger laboratory and well-positioned to compete for future DOE initiatives.” A formal search committee for the permanent Deputy position will be named shortly. Read about Fleming’s tenure and more comments from Director Chu here.

SHARES Campaign
Extended Three Days

The deadline for the Berkeley Lab SHARES charitable giving campaign has been extended three days. The last day to make donations, and to become eligible to win a raffle prize such as a vintage computer and tickets to Great America, is now Wednesday. The campaign supports the Lab's commitment to reach out to surrounding communities and help organizations that depend largely on donations. Go here to learn more and to make online donations. E-mail [email protected] with any questions.

Sample Inventory
Starts in January

Because the Lab scored so well in last year’s “wall-to-wall” inventory, the Department of Energy has approved a relatively small statistical sample inventory for next year. Validation of approximately 10 percent of the nearly 23,000 barcoded assets is scheduled to begin on Jan. 21. While all equipment with an acquisition value of $1 million or more and all laptops will need to be verified, the remainder of the inventory will involve samples of both “controlled” (over $5,000 in acquisition value) and sensitive items (go here for the list of sensitive property). Employees may link to their individual property records to confirm or update locations for assets assigned to them by their divisions. Employees can contact their Property Representatives for more information. The Core Property Group is available to support division efforts.

Materials Researcher
Honored by Society

Ramesh

The Materials Research Society (MRS) has awarded Ramamoorthy Ramesh of the Lab’s Materials Sciences Division its 2007 Turnbull Lectureship for his research on oxides and his "enthusiasm and leadership in conveying the excitement of this field." A professor in UC Berkeley's Materials Science and Engineering Department and one of the most cited researchers in physics, Ramesh did pioneering research on high-temperature superconductors at Berkeley Lab. He will receive the award, which includes $5,000 and a plaque, at the MRS fall meeting in Boston, where he will deliver the Turnbull Lecture, "Whither Oxide Electronics," on Tuesday, Nov. 27. Full story.

Poster Prize for Lab
Computing Scientists

Meza
Wang
Zhao

Three researchers from Berkeley Lab Computing Sciences won the "Best Poster" at the SC07 supercomputing conference held this week in Reno. Zhengji Zhao, Juan Meza and Lin-Wang Wang were recognized for their poster describing "A New O(N) Method for Petascale Nanoscience Simulations," which describes the new “linear scaling 3 dimensional fragment” method for ab initio electronic structure calculations. The poster was one of 39 accepted for the conference from more than 150 submissions. SC07 is the leading international conference on high performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. Go here for more information.

Video of Chu Energy
Talk Now Online