2001 Yucca Mountain tour.
Photo by: Roy Kaltschmidt
2001 Yucca Mountain tour.

ESD Organizational Changes

As of January 1, 2009, Hui-Hai (H.H.) Liu will take over from Stefan Finsterle as the Department Head for the Earth Sciences Division's Hydrogeology Department. I thank H.H. for accepting this important responsibility. As you may well be aware, H.H., who has been at Berkeley Lab since 1997, is widely recognized for his expertise in soil physics and subsurface hydrology, and was recently honored with Fellowship in the Geological Society of America. His experience and scientific insight should serve him well in his new role.

Stefan has done an exemplary job as Hydrogeology Department Head for the past three years. Please join me in thanking Stefan for doing such a conscientious job of leading the Department during a time of significant adjustments in our DOE support for hydrogeology. We also wish him well as he resumes life without DH responsibilities!

Here is a summary of our organization and their respective Department or Program Head:

Departments

The ESD Departments are aligned with the various scientific disciplines and consist of personnel whose core capabilities or expertise are mapped to an array of research areas in support of the ESD Programs. It is the role of the Department to provide the personnel resources needed to conduct the work as needed by a specific project within a given Program. Due to the crosscutting nature of the staff's expertise, where personnel may support multiple Programs, this alignment by Department enables the Division to address various operations functions, such as Safety Line Management.


Programs

It is the role of the Program to develop a long-term scientific agenda and purpose and ensuring its alignment with LBNL and ESD's mission and purpose. The Programs work with the Departments to match the disciplinary capabilities to the needs of the appropriate funding agency and to address the many research challenges we face today.