Jeff Neaton is responsible for Berkeley Lab’s research enterprise and serves as the Lab’s chief research liaison with the DOE Office of Science, the University of California, the national labs, and other key partners. He joined Berkeley Lab in 2003, and began his role as Interim Deputy Laboratory Director for Research and Chief Research Officer in 2026.
Neaton brings more than two decades of scientific leadership experience in both a national laboratory and academic setting, most recently serving as Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences at Berkeley Lab, overseeing the Chemical Sciences and Materials Sciences Divisions, as well as the lab’s two Basic Energy Sciences-sponsored national scientific user facilities, the Advanced Light Source and the Molecular Foundry. He also serves as a Professor in the Department of Physics at U.C. Berkeley, and as a Member of the Kavli Energy NanoSciences Institute, a partnership between UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab.
His research interests are in the theory of materials and condensed matter, and in developing and using computational and data-driven methods to predict, understand, and control phase behavior and electronic phenomena in complex materials from first principles. He serves on numerous international advisory boards, and from 2012-2018, he served as Division Associate Editor for Physical Review Letters. He is the recipient of a 2017 NERSC High Impact Scientific Achievement Award, and he was the 2018 Pariser-Parr Distinguished Lecturer in Chemistry at the University of North Carolina and the 2026 Pritchett Lecturer in Materials Science at Georgia Tech. The author of more than 300 publications, he is an ISI Highly-Cited Researcher.
Neaton has a deep commitment to workforce development, cultivating stewardship, and collaboration across research divisions, operations, federal agencies, and the national lab complex. He oversees Berkeley Lab’s research support functions, and continues to steer long-term development projects such as the upgrade of the Advanced Light Source, the world’s leading soft x-ray source.
Neaton received his B.A. in physics and astrophysics in 1995 from the University of Minnesota, his Ph.D. in physics in 2000 from Cornell University, and was a postdoctoral fellow at Rutgers University 2000-2003, and later at Berkeley Lab from 2003-2005.
Michael Brandt serves as a member of the Lab’s senior executive team along with the Laboratory Director and the Deputy Laboratory Director for Research and Chief Research Officer. He joined Berkeley Lab in March 2018.
Brandt provides leadership and direction for the Lab’s operations and mission support organizations and programs, including Environment, Health, and Safety; Facilities Management; Financial and Business Services; Human Resources; Information Technology; Project and Construction Management; Security and Emergency Management; Institutional Assurance and Integrity; and Project Management.
Before coming to Berkeley Lab, Brandt served as the Associate Laboratory Director of Environment, Safety, and Health (ES&H) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He was responsible for Lab-wide ES&H activities for its 12,0000 employees operating in the 38-square-mile Los Alamos site.
He holds a doctorate in public health with a specialty in environmental health sciences and an M.S. in public health policy from the University of Michigan. He also earned an M.S. in environmental health and industrial hygiene from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. in environmental science from Rutgers University.
Brandt has published more than 40 technical and leadership papers and delivered more than 100 invited technical, scientific, and leadership presentations. He has held academic appointments at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, and the College of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma. He served as President of the American Industrial Hygiene Association and was elected an association fellow in 2007.