Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center in the hills of Berkeley, California, United States. Established in 1931 by the University of California (UC), the laboratory is sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administered by the UC system. Ernest Lawrence, who won the Nobel prize for inventing the cyclotron, founded the lab and served as its director until his death in 1958. Located in the Berkeley Hills, the lab overlooks the campus of the University of California, Berkeley.
Melvin Ellis Calvin was an American biochemist known for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He spent most of his five-decade career at the University of California, Berkeley.
Armand Paul Alivisatos is a Greek-American chemist and academic administrator who has served as the 14th president of the University of Chicago since September 2021. He is a pioneer in nanomaterials development and an authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications. He was ranked fifth among the world's top 100 chemists for the period 2000–2010 in the list released by Thomson Reuters.
Persis S. Drell is the Provost Emerita and the James and Anna Marie Spilker Professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering, a professor of materials science and engineering, and a professor of physics. Prior to her appointment as provost, she was dean of the Stanford School of Engineering from 2014 to 2017 and director of the US Department of Energy’s SLAC National Acceleratory Laboratory from 2007 to 2012.
The President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a council, chartered in each administration with a broad mandate to advise the president of the United States on science and technology. The current PCAST was established by Executive Order 13226 on September 30, 2001, by George W. Bush, was re-chartered by Barack Obama's April 21, 2010, Executive Order 13539, by Donald Trump's October 22, 2019, Executive Order 13895, and by Joe Biden's February 1, 2021, Executive Order 14007.
The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) is the highest honor bestowed by the United States federal government on outstanding scientists and engineers in the early stages of their independent research careers. The White House, following recommendations from participating agencies, confers the awards annually. To be eligible for a Presidential Award, an individual must be a U.S. citizen, national, or permanent resident. Some of the winning scientists and engineers receive up to a five-year research grant.
Steven Chu is an American physicist and former government official. He is a Nobel laureate and was the 12th U.S. secretary of energy. He is currently the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at Stanford University. He is known for his research at the University of California, Berkeley, and his research at Bell Laboratories and Stanford University regarding the cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, for which he shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips.
Dian M. Grueneich is an American scholar and former public utilities commissioner. She served as a commissioner of the California Public Utilities Commission from 2005 until 2010. She is a senior research scholar at Stanford University's Precourt Institute for Energy.
David J. Hayes is an American attorney and legal scholar who serves in the Biden Administration as Special Assistant to the President for Climate Policy. Hayes has led White House work on clean energy deployment issues, climate resilience and greenhouse gas emission reduction and carbon sequestration initiatives. Hayes also has assisted in developing and implementing the climate-related provisions included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.
Arunava Majumdar is a materials scientist, engineer, and the inaugural dean of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. He was nominated for the position of Under Secretary of Energy in the United States between November 30, 2011, and May 15, 2012.
Arati Prabhakar is an American engineer and public official. From October 3, 2022, she has served as the 12th director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Science Advisor to the President.
Katherine "Kathy" Anne Yelick, an American computer scientist, is the vice chancellor for research and the Robert S. Pepper Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she was Associate Laboratory Director for Computing Sciences from 2010–2019.
John Neil Loughhead is a British engineer and businessman. He is Industrial Professor of Clean Energy at University of Birmingham, Chair of the Redwheel-Turquoise ClimateTech Investment Committee, and Council member at the University of York. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, and of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was formerly Chief Scientific Adviser to Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and to Department of Energy & Climate Change. He was appointed OBE for services to Technology in 2011 and CB in 2018. In 2014, he was voted as one of the Top 500 Most Influential People in Britain by Debrett's and The Sunday Times.
Stacey Bent is a professor of chemical engineering and vice provost for graduate education and postdoctoral affairs (VPGE) at Stanford University. She is the Jagdeep and Roshni Singh Professor of Engineering, the Bert and Candace Forbes University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. She was the director of the TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy and a senior associate dean in the Stanford School of Engineering until 2019. She is best known for contributions to semiconductor processing, materials chemistry, and surface science. Her work has been applied toward applications in semiconductors, solar cells, and catalysts.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a soil biogeochemist and political ecologist who served as Director of the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy from 2022 to 2024. She is a Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry and the Ted and Jan Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences; University of California, Merced. Her research group works to understand how soil helps regulate the Earth's climate.
Noël Bakhtian is the former director of the Berkeley Lab Energy Storage Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She has served as the director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies at Idaho National Laboratory and as a senior policy advisor for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Franklin (Lynn) M. Orr Jr. is an American chemical engineer and former Under Secretary for Science and Energy of the U.S. Department of Energy from 2014 to 2017. Prior to his government service, he was a professor of engineering at the Stanford Department of Energy Resources Engineering. He was elected a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering in 2000 for contributions to understanding of complex multicomponent flows in porous media and its applications to the design of enhanced oil recovery processes; and for superb academic leadership. He is married to Susan Packard Orr.
Jennifer (Jen) Dionne is an American scientist and pioneer of nanophotonics. She is currently full professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford University and by courtesy, of radiology, and also a Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Investigator. She is Deputy Director of Q-NEXT, a National Quantum Information Science funded by the DOE. From 2020-2024, she served as Stanford's inaugural Vice Provost of Shared Facilities, where she advanced funding, infrastructure, education, and staff support within shared facilities. During this time, she also was Director of the Department of Energy's "Photonics at Thermodynamic Limits" Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), which strives to create thermodynamic engines driven by light. She is also an editor of the ACS journal Nano Letters. Dionne's research develops photonic materials and methods to observe and control chemical and biological processes as they unfold with nanometer scale resolution, emphasizing critical challenges in global health and sustainability.
Rachel A. Segalman is the Edward Noble Kramer Professor and Department Chair of Chemical Engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). Her laboratory works on semiconducting block polymers, polymeric ionic liquids, and hybrid thermoelectric materials. She is the associated director of the Center for Materials for Water Energy System, an associate editor of ACS Macro Letters, and co-editor of the Annual Review of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Lara Olsen ATSE is a chemical engineer and sustainable technology leader, working in delivering climate change solutions, and the managing director of South East Water, in Australia. She was recognised as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2023 and worked on the Big Battery in Hornsdale, an industrial scale renewable energy battery in South Australia.
