It has been nearly 10 years since our friend, colleague, leader, former Director of the Earth Sciences Division, passed away leaving the Earth Sciences family so abruptly at LBNL. Dr. Gudmundur Bodvarsson, or Bo as we all came to know him as, passed away on November 29, 2006. There will be several activities and formats…
Read More
As part of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Berkeley Lab interviews Newton Nguyen, a research assistant in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division. Diagnosed with a degenerative vision condition when he was five, Newton is legally blind but says his disability has helped him better understand other peoples’ perspectives and broaden his own thinking. Read…
Read More
Congratulations to EESA’s 12 FY2017 LDRD award recipients! LDRDs support high-quality science proposals, especially those that advance new strategic directions for EESA and the Berkeley Lab. Here are this year’s awardees: Lab-wide strategic growth Awards to support Microbes to Biomes Eoin Brodie—Harnessing the soil microbiome for food and fuel security Javier Ceja Navarro—The Soil Metazoan…
Read More
Using the award-winning PhyloChip, a credit card-sized device that can detect the presence of more than 60,000 species of bacteria and archaea, a new method was found that was more sensitive than conventional methods at assessing health risks of microbially contaminated water.
Read More
On September 19, Energy Geosciences Division (EGD) Director, Jens Birkholzer announced Peter Nico as the new Program Domain Lead for Sustainable Energy Systems (a role was previously held by Birkholzer).
Read More
Margaret Torn and Lydia Vaughn (picture not available) of the Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division contributed to a paper in the journal Science that found that soil will absorb far less atmospheric carbon than expected during the 21st century. The research, led by scientists from UC Irvine, was conducted by adding highly accurate radiocarbon dating…
Read More
Announced today by Susan Hubbard, ALD for the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA), Barry Freifeld will assume the role as Department Head for Hydrogeology, effective November 1, 2016. Barry is internationally recognized by the scientific community for advances in wellbore monitoring technologies used to gain greater understanding of subsurface processes. He has managed the…
Read More
A team of scientists from Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, and Florida State University return from a 10-day ocean voyage after completing their mission to launch and recover four Carbon Flux Explorer robots. Led by Jim Bishop (Faculty Senior Scientist in EESA’s Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division), the team, and the robots would…
Read More
The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is issuing a national Call to Action and forming an interagency group to protect America’s soil. Soil plays critical roles in food security, climate mitigation, ecosystem function, and buffering against extreme weather events. Although it is essential for the stability of the planet, soil is…
Read More
The eight species of fungi on board, which are descended from microbes collected at Chernobyl, may one day lead the way to a “sunblock” that could protect human space travelers from the harmful radiation of space. The microbes were originally collected by Tamas Torok a scientist affiliated with the Climate and Ecosystems Sciences Division. “Some…
Read More