Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Berkeley Lab’s battery team looks beyond vehicles to electric grid

Berkeley Lab, known for having one of the top research programs in the country for batteries and fuel cells for vehicle applications, is entering another area in the battery world. The Lab has been granted $1.6 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds to develop a novel storage device for the electric grid. »

Graphene under strain creates gigantic pseudo-magnetic fields

A team of researchers headed by Berkeley Lab’s Michael Crommie reports the creation of pseudo-magnetic fields far stronger than the strongest magnetic fields ever sustained in a laboratory—just by putting the right kind of strain onto a patch of graphene. The discovery sheds new light on fundamental scientific discoveries going back over a century. »

DOE awards $122 million for study of artificial photosynthesis

DOE has awarded up to $122 million over five years to a multi-institutional partnership headed by Cal Tech and Berkeley Lab to establish an Energy Innovation Hub aimed at developing revolutionary methods to generate fuels directly from sunlight. The new energy hub will be called the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis. »

In Memoriam: Gerson Goldhaber, renowned physicist

Gerson Goldhaber, an award-winning physicist with Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, who played key roles in discoveries that spanned more than five decades, passed away July 19 at the age of 86. Goldhaber was renowned for his experimental contributions to such seminal breakthroughs as the antiproton and the J/psi subatomic particles, and the mysterious dark energy that accelerates the expansion of the universe. He was also an accomplished artist who illustrated two books of poems written by his wife, Judith. »

Berkeley Lab In The News

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Lab Gets Its Own Entrepreneur in Residence

Science can be a long, slow haul. The road to discovery is often filled with endless experiments, much trial and error and, sometimes, a very lucky break. Contrast that with venture capitalism—a whirlwind of activity, marked with a rush to get a product to market and turn a profit. Can the two work together? An innovative new program at the Lab is proving they can, very well. Since late last year Jim Matheson has been Berkeley Lab’s “entrepreneur in residence” working to “add some commercialization impulse to the Lab,” as he puts it. »

Simulations Show That "Sweaty" Flowers Cool the World

flower The world is a cooler, wetter place because of transpiring flowers, say University of Chicago researchers, who ran more than a million lines of code on Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center's IBM Power5 "Bassi" system last year. They found that this effect is especially pronounced in the Amazon basin, where 80 percent of ever-wet rainforest area would not exist without flowering plants. »

Bone fracture study reveals the dangers of high irradiation exposure

bone

Scientists used the powerful x-ray beams of Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source to discover that exposure to high levels of irradiation can lead to drastic losses in bone strength, ductility and toughness. The study examined the changes in crack path and toughening mechanisms in human cortical bone, as seen in the image above. More »

Science program targets underprivileged students

Six Bay Area kids from under-served communities are getting the experience of a lifetime — learning about science and getting paid to do it. It's summer science camp for students whose parents did not have the chance to go to college. Six high school students from Berkeley, Richmond, San Francisco and Oakland were selected for the Introductory College Level Experience in Microbiology. Clem Fortman, the co-founder of the program, is a scientist at the Joint Bioenergy Institute in Emeryville. Watch the KGO-TV video here

Computing staff introduce high schoolers to careers in computing, networking

kids Computing Sciences is hosting 14 local high school students as part of an outreach program to introduce students to various career options in scientific computing and networking. The sessions include presentations, hands-on activities, and tours of facilities. The program was developed with input from computer science teachers at Berkeley High, Albany High, Richmond's Kennedy High, and Oakland Tech. Computing Staff present a wide range of topics including assembling a desktop computer, cyber security war stories, algorithms for combustion and astrophysics and the role of applied math. It's all part of the Lab's commitment to mentor the next generation of scientists.