Members of the Area Council for Earth & Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) are photographed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), in Berkeley, California, 03/07/2023.

The Earth and Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) committees, Division Representatives, and Lab-wide committees enable EESA and Berkeley Lab to make decisions, take action on, or report on subject matter critical to operational and scientific activities. If you would like more information or are interested in participating on discussions regarding the subject areas identified below, please feel free to contact the representative or member.

EESA Organized Committees and Councils

Area and Division Councils

The Earth and Environmental Sciences Area Council is composed of the Division Directors, all program domain leads, department heads, and operations manager. Additional invitees include operations leads, human resources, and the safety coordinator plus ad-hoc members. The council is chaired by the Associate Lab Director and meets twice a month, typically on Mondays.

Division Councils, which are held once a month, are chaired by the Division Director and includes the department heads, Division program domain leads, operations managers, human resources, and the safety coordinator plus ad-hoc members.

Earth & Environmental Sciences Area

Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division

- Bill Riley, Chair
- Sebastien Biraud
- Eoin Brodie
- Romy Chakraborty
- Andy Jones
- Gianna Marschmann
- Haiyan Teng
- Margaret Torn
- Charu Varadharajan

- Ken Williams

Energy Geosciences Division

Area Safety Committee

Vivi Fissekidou (Chair)

See all Committee Members

Area Staff Committee

Awards Committee

Ken Williams (Co-Chair, CESD Rep and CESD Representative to the Lab Director’s Recognition Committee)
Peter Nico (Co-Chair, EGD Rep and EGD Representative to the Lab Director’s Recognition Committee)
Newsha Ajami
Nick Bouskill
Charles Koven
Ben Gilbert
Baptiste Dafflon
Boris Faybishenko
Julia Correa
Orlando Casiano
Melanie Kincaid, Administrative Liaison

Distinguished Scientists Seminar Series Committee

The Distinguished Scientist Seminar Series Committee invites eminent individuals from various disciplines in the scientific community whose research is outstanding, interdisciplinary, and of broad interest to strategic initiatives in the earth sciences to present their research at Berkeley Lab.

Matthias Sprenger
Bridgette Hall (Administrative Liaison)

Early Career Development Grants (ECDG) Committee

The Earth and Environmental Sciences Early Career Development Grants (ECDG) Committee is composed of a representative from each of the five departments. The committee is charged with managing the ECDG program. The intent of the ECDG is to provide an opportunity for early career, scientific staff to develop new concepts, tools, and approaches with the potential to complement and/or enhance existing EESA research programs, lead to or make progress on new EESA research directions, or to lay the foundation for future proposals. These projects are envisioned to be ‘seed’ projects that can be completed within 1-2 years. The ECDG committee will evaluate the projects and may request short presentations by candidates whose proposals are under consideration for funding. The committee meets annually.

EESA Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accountability (IDEA) Executive Committee

EESA K-12 STEM Outreach Liaisons

Berkeley Lab offers a dynamic range of K-12 STEM outreach and educational programs. These programs exist to excite young people about the expansive world of STEM, engage students in activities that will strengthen their STEM identity, and increase the number of students from underrepresented groups that pursue a STEM major/career. If you are interested to volunteer, please contact one of our EESA K-12 STEM Outreach Liaisons who can help coordinate your volunteer efforts with Berkeley Lab’s K-12 program office.

Harrison Lisabeth

Get to Know Your Postdoc Seminar Series Committee

The Earth & Environmental Sciences Area (EESA) Get to Know Your Postdoc Seminar Series (GTKYPD) is a monthly seminar series that provides EESA postdocs opportunities to showcase their research to the broader EESA community, to enable networking with researchers across EESA disciplines, and to foster stronger postdoc ties. The seminar series was originally started by the Energy Geosciences Division in 2018, and through its success, expanded to the larger area in 2019.

Michelle Newcomer, (Chair)

Sandy Chin (Operations liaison)

GMF Committee

Within the Department of Energy national laboratory system, the Geosciences Measurement Facility (GMF) is singularly capable of designing, building, testing, and deploying customized Earth and environmental science instrumentation. GMF engineers, scientists, and machinists work alongside their scientific research partners within GMF’s specialized fabrication and testing facilities at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at field observatory sites worldwide. Through this partnering, GMF brings to life custom solutions that push the frontier of Earth science discovery.