Berkeley Lab Expert Interviews

In this one-minute audio, Ethan Crumlin, Deputy for Science in the Chemical Sciences Division and a staff scientist at the Advanced Light Source, explains how APXPS, a specialized technique at the Advanced Light Source, identifies a “rainbow” of interfacial chemistry products essential to high-performance batteries and other energy technologies.

Cyclotron Road, a DOE Lab-Embedded Entrepreneurship Program at Berkeley Lab, empowers leading science entrepreneurs to advance their technology projects from idea to global impact. Among its successes is Fervo Energy, founded by 2018 cohort members Tim Latimer and Jack Norbeck. Fervo provides 24/7 energy by developing next-generation geothermal power, revolutionizing this type of power generation by making it cost effective and globally scalable. Listen to this podcast where we talk about how Cyclotron Road supports the next generation of science entrepreneurs.

Featuring: 

Jack Norbeck, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Fervo Energy. Jack leads the company’s geothermal exploration and reservoir engineering strategy. Prior to co-founding Fervo through the Cyclotron Road program, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the USGS Earthquake Science Center.

Actinide Chemistry at the 88-Inch Cyclotron

Cybersecurity is essential to protecting the data, infrastructure, and technologies behind modern science and society. At the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Sean Peisert leads efforts to secure everything from supercomputers to the power grid. Using innovative approaches like physics-based monitoring and privacy-preserving data analysis, his team’s work positions cybersecurity not just as a defense, but as a tool for enabling collaboration and progress. 

Featuring: 

Sean Peisert, senior scientist and lead of cybersecurity and privacy research and development at Berkeley Lab. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of California, Davis, and the director of Trusted CI, the National Science Foundation’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.

The Molecular Foundry is a state-of-the-art user facility that provides expertise, methods, and instrumentation for scientists to study materials at the nanoscale. In this episode, Ashfia shares with us the Foundry's mission, its capabilities, and some of the groundbreaking research that has been conducted there. From developing new tools and techniques to pushing the boundaries of what we can see at the atomic level, the Molecular Foundry is at the forefront of nanoscience research.

Featuring: 

Ashfia Huq is the director of the Molecular Foundry – a DOE-funded nanoscience research facility that provides scientists from around the world access to world-class expertise and instrumentation in a collaborative, multidisciplinary environment.

In this 5-minute audio interview, listen as Nigel Mouncey, Director of the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), explains how this user facility supports the world’s scientists.

Featuring: 

Nigel Mouncey, the Director of the DOE Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). In addition to leading JGI, Mouncey also heads the Secondary Metabolites Program that is developing large-scale innovative approaches to study regulation and biosynthesis of secondary metabolites. 

Fusion energy has the potential to transform energy supplies for the world. At the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, researchers are developing the technologies and techniques needed to make fusion energy a reality. In this audio interview, hear how their interdisciplinary work is paving the way toward limitless energy for the future.

Featuring: Cameron Geddes, director of the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division at Berkeley Lab. He leads the division in inventing, developing, and deploying particle accelerators, lasers, and photon sources to extend the frontiers of science, as well as systems for fusion and related areas of applied physics. His research focuses on the study of laser-driven plasma waves to create next-generation compact particle accelerators for high-energy physics and photon sources, advanced laser technologies, and high energy density science. 

Geothermal energy taps into the Earth’s natural heat—but what happens when that heat isn’t easily accessible? Berkeley Lab scientists are working to solve that problem through enhanced geothermal systems, or EGS. In this episode, we talk with Eva Schill, program lead for geothermal systems in the Energy Geosciences Division, about the promise of EGS, what makes it different from conventional geothermal energy, and why Berkeley Lab is uniquely positioned to drive this technology forward.

Featuring: Eva Schill is the Geothermal Systems Program Lead in the Energy Geosciences Division at Berkeley Lab. With a background in geology and geophysics, Schill oversees a portfolio of projects advancing both conventional and enhanced geothermal technologies.