The American Chemical Society has named Chancellor’s Professor of Chemistry, Bioengineering and Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Teresa Head-Gordon as an ACS Fellow for 2018. More>
Six Berkeley Lab scientists have been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science to receive significant funding for research through its Early Career Research Program. More>
The award winners include Christopher Chang, John Hartwig, Daniel Neumark, and Dean Toste, all with the Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division, and who hold joint appointments at UC Berkeley. The Royal Society of Chemistry chooses award winners for the originality and impact of their research, or for their contributions to the chemical sciences industry or chemistry education. More>
James Demmel (left) of the Computational Research Division, and Dean Toste (center) and Birgitta Whaley of the Chemical Sciences Division, have been elected as fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780, the Academy honors exceptional scholars, leaders, artists, and innovators. The 2018 class includes such luminaries as actor Tom Hanks and author Ta-Nehisi Coates.More >>
April 10, 2018 – That Peter Agbo’s love for science and interest in the national labs started early in life is no surprise. His dad worked at Livermore Lab as an electrical engineer specializing in communications systems research, and his mom was a science teacher. But it wasn’t until he took “an amazing AP chemistry class” in high school that he knew he wanted to be a chemist, he said.
Today, Agbo is a researcher in the Chemical Sciences Division, and a project scientist/materials engineer at the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis. Just three years after joining Berkeley Lab as a postdoc, he will be entering the next stage of his young career — leading a research team in the design of inorganic catalysts modeled after natural enzymes to efficiently convert carbon dioxide into fuels.
His work is being funded by an Early Career Laboratory Directed Research and Development Award, a new program launched last year to help young scientists further their research at the Lab, and to bring together a diverse group of scientists at a formative state in their careers.
In this Q&A, Agbo discusses the steps he took to get to Berkeley Lab, what he plans to work on under this LDRD, and advice for future scientists.
Q: How did you get into this field of science/research? Why did you want to do this type of scientific research at Berkeley Lab?
I knew that a career in research would be the right path for me after completing my Ph.D. I also knew that industrial R&D wouldn’t give me the latitude to do work in research, but that the national lab system would. And since I have family in the Bay Area, Berkeley Lab was the perfect choice.
So I joined the Lab three years ago as a postdoc in Rebecca Abergel’s lab in the Chemical Sciences Division. Rebecca’s group was a perfect fit for someone like me because she does a lot of work on lanthanide chemistry. Lanthanides are interesting because they exhibit a lot of unique photophysical traits, and one application I was interested in was the design of materials that could absorb light of particular wavelengths and efficiently re-emit them at different wavelengths so you can tune them to a desired frequency.
Q: What does winning this award mean to you? What will you be working on under your LDRD award?
My LDRD mostly has to do with the design of a good inorganic catalyst for converting CO2 into useful fuels. In particular, my work under this LDRD is focused on trying to take the design aspects of proteins that are very good at catalyzing CO2 transformations, and incorporating them into inorganic materials that would be part of a device dedicated to converting CO2 to hydrocarbon fuel.
Winning this LDRD is a great opportunity. It has allowed me to take on a high-risk project by giving me the resources and support to carry it out. It’s also giving me a chance to develop myself as a scientist who can independently lead a project.
Q: Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
I want to remain here because national labs are the perfect place to do independent research, and I’m interested in the science being done here at Berkeley Lab. Ultimately, I like the idea that Berkeley Lab is geared toward solving not just large problems but also doing science as service for the nation. If you look at big scientific advances, you can trace it to the national lab system – it’s a legacy I’m happy to make myself a part of.
Q: What advice do you have for others who are interested in a career in science?
Take time to develop your writing skills before going to graduate school. Writing is not emphasized enough for undergraduates majoring in science, and when you get to graduate school, you suddenly learn you have to communicate and write proposals. Quantitative skills are not enough to succeed as a scientist.
-- By Theresa Duque
August 10, 2017 – Lin Lin, an assistant professor of mathematics, and Eric Neuscamman, an assistant professor of chemistry, have received 2017 Early Career Research Program awards from the Department of Energy to further their work on new materials.
Lin, who joined UC Berkeley’s math department in 2014 and is a faculty scientist in the Computational Research Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will use his award to tackle a big challenge for scientists trying to computationally simulate the properties of materials: bridging the gap between materials’ nanoscale properties, which are described by quantum mechanics, and the macroscopic properties described by classical physics.
The area of “mesoscale” science in which Lin works has implications for a number of areas of materials science, such as understanding material defects, battery degradation and crack propagation.
“In many important areas of research — such as defect structure and evolution, coupled chemical reactions and pathways, transport properties, non-equilibrium structures and assembly of hierarchical functional materials — the properties and functionalities that are critical to macroscopic behavior start to manifest themselves at the mesoscale,” said Lin.
He hopes to develop new numerical methods and other mathematical tools to accurately capture mesoscale phenomena in multiscale simulations.
Eric Neuscamman, assistant professor of chemistry.
Neuscamman, who joined the College of Chemistry in 2015, derives and implements new theoretical models and related algorithms for the electronic structure of molecules and materials. He plans to combine theoretical chemistry and the mathematics of random processes to design high‐fidelity models for electron transfer that can be used on DOE’s high performance computers.
“Processes that move electrons between molecules play crucial roles in battery technology, light harvesting, liquid fuels production and many other high‐priority areas of energy science,” he wrote in his application for the award.
Now in its eighth year, the award supports exceptional researchers during critical stages of their formative work by funding their research for five years.
Five Scientists Named AAAS Fellows
November 21, 2016 – Five scientists have been named Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). They include Eleanor Blakely (Biosciences), Mary Gaillard (Physics), Howard Matis (Nuclear Science), Krishna Niyogi (Biosciences), and David Shuh (Chemical Sciences). More>
Lab’s Abergel Receives ACS Rising Star Award for Women Scientists
WASHINGTON DC, October 26, 2016 – The award, sponsored by the Women Chemists Committee of the American Chemical Society, was established to help promote retention of women in science. Chemical scientist Rebecca Abergel is among the 2017 recipients. Watch Abergel explain creating a pill to treat radiation exposure at a 2014 Science at the Theater event.
Lab Researchers Recognized by American Physical Society With 2017 Awards and Fellowships
WASHINGTON DC, October 11, 2016 – The American Physical Society (APS) announced its Spring 2017 prize and award winners along with its new class of Fellows and numerous Berkeley Lab researchers are among those named. These honors are highly regarded, and represent critical recognition from the recipients’ most discerning audience, their peers.
Robert Lucchese of the Chemical Sciences Division was named as an APS Fellow.
2017 National Award Recipients
Receiving the Ahmed Zewail Award in Ultrafast Science and Technology, sponsored by the Ahmed Zewail Endowment Fund established by the Newport Corp., is Stephen R. Leone, University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
WASHINGTON DC, August 22, 2016 – Following are the recipients of awards administered by the American Chemical Society for 2017. Vignettes of the award recipients will appear in C&EN in early 2017. With the exception of the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards, these recipients will be honored at the Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, April 4, 2017, in conjunction with the 253rd ACS National Meeting in San Francisco, CA.
Francesca Toma Receives Alfredo di Braccio Award
NEW YORK, June 30, 2015 – The prestigious Italian National Academy of Science, which counts Galileo Galilei as one of its first members, assigns this prize to a top young scientist. Toma (Chemical Sciences) was honored for her prolific, high-quality scientific contribution in different aspects of nanotechnology. The ceremony took place on June 10 in Rome, which was attended by President of Italy Sergio Mattarella.
2015 National Laureates
Honorees include Christopher J. Chang, PhD.
NEW YORK, June 30, 2015 – A chemist who has made important discoveries in both the human brain and sustainable energy, a neurosurgeon who has done pioneering work mapping the “blueprint” of how humans speak and hear, and a computer scientist who has changed our understanding of the capacity of wireless networks are the three winners of the 2015 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists.
Professor William H Miller ForMemRS
Kenneth S. Pitzer Distinguished Professor Emeritus, and Professor of the Graduate School, Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley. Professor Miller’s papers over the last 45 years have essentially defined the field of theoretical chemical dynamics. Full Article >>
Lab Researchers Among Five Faculty Named Bakar Fellows
Among the latest to join the ranks of the Bakar Fellows Program, which supports UC Berkeley faculty working to apply scientific discoveries to real-world issues, are Ke Xu of the Life Sciences Division, who works on super-resolution microscopy, and Holger Müller (pictured), a guest scientist in the Chemical Sciences Division. More >>
Head-Gordon, Neumark, Nogales Elected to National Academy of Sciences
The academy is the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science organization. This year’s fellows include Martin Head-Gordon (left) and Daniel Neumark (center) of the Chemical Sciences Division, and Eva Nogales of the Life Sciences Division. Full Article >>
