2001 Yucca Mountain tour.
Image courtesy of Greg Newman
Three-dimensional resistivity image derived from Coso (CA) Geothermal Field from magnetotelluric data sets.

ESD Organizational Changes

There are several key additions and changes to organization as follows:

As of April 1, 2009, Greg Newman will take over from Jim Berryman as the Department Head for the Earth Sciences Division's Geophysics Department. Jim has done an excellent job over the past three-plus years and we thank him for his service to the Division and in welcoming Greg.

As many of you are aware, Greg is a leading figure in the development of large scale inverse models for geophysical exploration. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1987, worked for many years as a staff member at Sandia National Lab in New Mexico, and came to LBNL in 2004. His expertise has significantly enhanced our Division capabilities in computational geophysics, and we look forward to his leadership in maintaining the health and vitality of our Geophysics Department.

In addition, we have made several additions to the Programmatic leadership in the Division. The first change is the addition of Bill Collins (also serves as the Climate Science Department Head) joining Margaret Torn as a Program Head in Climate and Carbon Sciences to address the specific program area of Climate. Second, Division Director, Don DePaolo will assume Program Head responsibilities in the Fundamental and Exploratory Research; however, Ernie Majer will continue to support Don where necessary. The final change is the addition of Dave McCallen to the Nuclear Energy and Waste Program. Dave, who is a recent addition to the LBNL-ESD organization will focus on coordinating the Nuclear Energy research for LBNL and ESD's program while Jens Birkholzer continues leading the research in response to Nuclear Waste.

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

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.