The Morning Session: Honoring 10 Years of Advancing Science for the Future

During the morning session, the speakers emphasized the scientific advancements achieved over the past ten years under the leadership of Mike Witherell, the Lab Director. They discussed their plans to continue his vision and provided updates on some of the most significant accomplishments of his tenure. These talks included:

• David Schlegel, senior physicist, Physics Division: “What is the World Made Of?”

• David Prendergast, senior staff scientist, Molecular Foundry: “Building New Eyes to Discover New Worlds”

• Debbie Bard, head of NERSC Science Engagement and Workflows Department: “Computing the World of Science”

• Trent Northern, senior scientist, Biosciences: “Harnessing Biology”

• Vassilia Zorba, senior scientist, Energy Technologies: “Powering the World Without Breaking It”

• Margaret Torn, senior scientist and program head, Earth and Environmental Sciences: “The Future of the Planet”

The Afternoon Session: Honoring a Lifetime of Scientific Excellence - Celebrating the Extraordinary Career of Michael S. Witherell

The speakers at the event included a video congratulations from 

• Dario Gil, Under Secretary for Science at the Department of Energy (DOE); 

• Harriet Kung, Deputy Director for Science Programs at the Office of Science, DOE; 

• Marcia McNutt, former president of the National Academy of Sciences; 

• Young Kee Kim, a physics professor at the University of Chicago and Director Emeritus of Fermilab; 

• James Milliken, President of the University of California; 

• June Yu, Vice President for UC National Laboratories; 

• Ram Seshadri, Dean for Research at UC Santa Barbara.

The session concluded with remarks from the honoree, Mike Witherell, directed to his colleagues at the Lab. You can also read his remarks. 

The UC Board of Regents announced on May 5 that Katherine (Kathy) Yelick will succeed Mike Witherell as Berkeley Lab’s next director, following a national search. Her appointment begins on July 1.

Kathy is a leading computer scientist with a highly distinguished research and leadership career. She is currently the Vice Chancellor for Research and the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, and a senior faculty scientist at the Lab. She served as Associate Laboratory Director for the Lab’s Computing Sciences Area from 2010 through 2019, and was the director of NERSC from 2008 to 2012.

Watch the interview with Kathy and Mike on her vision for the Lab’s future.

Recording of Lab Director Mike Witherell's final State of the Lab Town Hall. Topics include the Lab's scientific strategy, the great strengths of its scientific and operational staff, and the Lab's important national user facilities. Director Witherell also speaks to the plan for growing and maintaining the Lab's infrastructure.

This lab-wide town hall featured the latest on the Lab's AI for science strategy, the Genesis Mission, and ways Lab staff can engage. Speakers include Mike Witherell, Jonathan Carter, Jeff Neaton, Stefan Wild, and Chin Guok. This is the first of a series of collaboration events on AI at Berkeley Lab.

Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, Director-General of CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, joined Lab Director Mike Witherell for a fireside chat about her career, CERN, and the future of physics. An internationally recognized expert in particle physics, Dr. Gianotti is the first woman to lead CERN and the first Director-General to be reappointed for a full second term. She previously headed the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider during the discovery of the Higgs boson.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright spent the day at Berkeley Lab, engaging with scientists, touring key facilities, and walking a robotic dog fitted with a radiation sensor. The Secretary highlighted his lifelong passion for science, met with researchers across fields from biomanufacturing to geothermal, and toured world-class user facilities including NERSC, ESnet, JGI, ALS, and the Molecular Foundry. 

Formed from collapsed stars, pulsars are tiny astronomical objects that emit stunning, twin beams of light from each pole. Researcher Revathi Jambunathan is developing computer models of pulsars to answer questions about large-scale features, like their epic light displays and powerful electromagnetic fields, all the way down to the atomic-scale interactions of charged particles in the outer layer of plasma. This pioneering work will help us better understand the physics governing particles inside stars light years away, and those inside particle accelerators here on Earth.

For the first time, scientists streamed raw physics data across the entire country in real time, at 100 Gbps, with no buffering or temporal storage. The EJFAT prototype has been designed to allow different types of facilities like X-ray light sources and particle accelerators to stream data to multiple supercomputers for processing and analysis.  Successfully enabling such streaming means that researchers can more quickly and easily calibrate and steer time-sensitive experiments while they’re happening.  Learn more about this project here.

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