Two EESA women, Sandy Chin (left) and Laura Nielsen Lammers (right), were chosen for the 2020 Women @ The Lab awards. (Credit: Jenny Nuss/Berkeley Lab)
Two EESA women, Sandy Chin and Laura Nielsen Lammers, were chosen for the 2020 Women @ The Lab awards. They join an esteemed cohort of 15 women across Berkeley Lab who have made and continue to make significant contributions in the areas of leadership, science, operations, mentorship, and outreach.
Sandy Chin, who recently assumed the role of EESA research administration manager, was nominated for her role as project manager for Next Generation Ecosystems Experiment-Tropics (NGEE Tropics). Her nominators cited how essential Sandy has been to the success of the multi-lab, international research endeavor, leading budget development, logistics, and internal and external communications. Her achievements include guiding the project team through a successful Phase 2 proposal development and review process, resulting in a $35M award, and successfully managing the project through a wildly fluctuating budgetary environment, providing adaptive management of funds and priorities. Apart from her project management duties, Sandy initiated a collaboration with IT Services to develop a prototype of today’s Lab-wide tool for managing the PMP process. This foundational tool provided simple automated tracking that was immediately adopted Lab-wide and is still in use today. She is also the Early Career and Postdoc Development Lead (including student internships) within EESA.
Faculty scientist Laura Nielsen Lammers has made significant scientific contributions to interface/surface chemistry, publishing over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles spanning areas of mineral crystal growth, nutrient recovery, and rare-earth recovery from waste, clay minerals for nuclear waste storage and geological CO2 sequestration. She effectively integrates her experience in academia, research labs, and environmental consulting to offer applied solutions to 21st century problems relating to sustainable engineering, and was recently awarded the highly prestigious DOE Early Career Research Program (ECRP) funding for her grant on exploring non-classical molecular crystal growth pathways. Laura serves as the director of Berkeley Connect – a large mentorship program for undergraduate students in UC Berkeley that organizes outreach and professional development activities, and has mentored several undergraduate and postdoctoral researchers.
A virtual W@TL event is being planned for March 30th, 3:00 pm-4:30 pm.