LBL Director Charles V. Shank, in his annual address to the UC Board of Regents, described the expanding range of partnerships LBL is entering into as the 21st century approaches.
Shank said that in the nearly six decades since LBL became the first of the national laboratories, a growing number of research institutions also have risen to prominence. With scientific expertise spread throughout the country today, Shank said LBL is inexorably making the transition to a new era where it will serve as a hub of collaborative research efforts.
"LBL is heavily involved with establishing new partnerships with universities, industry, and other national laboratories," Shank said. "We want to be the focal point that brings the capabilities of all these institutions together to accomplish something that none could achieve alone."
Speaking at the March 19 regents meeting, Shank said the Laboratory will preserve its close relationship to the Berkeley campus but that it will also develop other important relationships.
Shank cited the Advanced Light Source as an example of how LBL may evolve. Berkeley faculty will be among the major users of the facility but the ALS also gives the Laboratory the opportunity to foster a number of new partnerships.
"To help insure the University of California takes advantage of new opportunities at the ALS, UC President David Gardner established the ALS Professorship Program," Shank said. "In this program, LBL establishes a partnership with a UC campus in the form of joint faculty appointments. We have three such appointments now -- Riverside, Davis, and San Francisco."
Shank told the Regents about another new collaboration anchored by LBL involving x-ray lithography. Using an experimental x-ray beamline at the ALS, researchers will attempt to develop a new generation of semiconductor microchips with features as small as 100 nanometers (about 1/1000th the thickness of a human hair).
"At LBL," he said, "we have formed a group that consists of industry -- Intel, IBM, AT&T, and Advanced Micro Devices -- as well as university researchers, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The Laboratory will be receiving $10 million this year from DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) to begin this x-ray lithography program."
Shank said LBL's industrial partners include not only large well- established companies but a number of small, start-up companies. Recounting physicist John Clarke's development of the world's first superconducting electronic circuit, Shank described LBL's new partnership with Sunnyvale-based Conductus, Inc. to produce a device that detects the magnetic field generated by a human heartbeat, making possible the creation of a magnetocardiogram.
While emphasizing the practical scientific benefits to the state and the nation from LBL's research, Shank reminded the Regents that the core of LBL's missions remains its pursuit of fundamental scientific knowledge. Basic science provides LBL the platform that makes subsequent tangible progress possible, he said.
William Frazer, UC's senior vice president for Academic Affairs, reinforced Shank's message to the Regents. Frazer noted that a number of Regents had traveled to Hawaii in the past year to see the Keck Telescope and its novel mirror, which consists of 36 hexagonal segments.
Frazer told the Regents that many people have forgotten LBL's role in designing and building the telescope. The Keck Telescope was conceived and designed at LBL, and the mirror support and controls systems were designed and built at LBL. He cited this as one of the readily-appreciable benefits to society for which the Laboratory is responsible.
The Scientific and Educational Advisory Committee (SEAC) that reviews LBL's operations also presented its annual report on the Lab to the Regents.
Said SEAC chairman Edwin Goldwasser: "The scientific and engineering staffs of the Laboratory are of very high quality, and the facilities and equipment that they have acquired and built give them opportunities to address some of the most pressing problems of modern science, many of them with high promise to have significant impacts on technological creativity, productivity, and competitiveness."
Goldwasser praised Shank's leadership of the Lab. "It is a pleasure to report the continuing view of the Committee that Dr. Shank is providing just the kind of strong leadership that LBL both requires and deserves," he said. "His emphasis on scientific substance is contagious, while, at the same time, his attention to administrative structure smacks both of wisdom and of courage."