Category Archives: LBL
Fourth Berkeley site proposed for LBL second campus
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory received a fourth Berkeley proposal for a new campus – the old Marchant Building on San Pablo Avenue near Ashby Avenue.
Redico, a Michigan-based real-estate development company, suggested to the lab that the 540,000 square foot building on a 6.5 acre plot of land become its new second campus, according to a knowledgeable source who asked not to be named.
The Marchant Building, which was used by the University of California as a storage facility for 28 years, straddles Berkeley, Emeryville and Oakland. The university vacated the building in 2010 and Redico has been promoting it since then as prime R&D and office space for the East Bay Green Corridor. … Continue reading »
Berkeley Lab received 21 submissions for possible sites for a second campus, according to Jon Weiner, a lab spokesman.
Eight East Bay cities, including Berkeley, Oakland, Albany, Richmond, Alameda, Walnut Creek and Dublin pitched sites for the new campus, according to various news reports. The proposed sites include a 30-acre swath of land adjacent to Golden Gate Fields, two different areas near Aquatic Park, four sites in Oakland, a joint Berkeley-Emeryville site and many more.
The lab plans to narrow the list down to as few as four sites by April, with the goal of selecting a final site in June. The lab would not move onto the new campus until 2015.
Berkeley Lab wants to consolidate the facilities it has spread out around the East Bay. The new site should accommodate as much as two million square feet in office and laboratory space and a 3,000-foot long space for a new Advanced Light Facility, according to the lab’s Request for Qualifications.
Three Berkeley sites proposed for new LBL campus
When officials from Berkeley Lab open proposals for a second campus today, there will be three Berkeley-based offers: one at Golden Gate Fields, and two separate projects near Aquatic Park, according to informed sources who asked not to be named.
The fact that there are three sites proposed in Berkeley may give the city a good shot at snaring the Lab’s expansion, since it is more than any other city is offering. Alameda, Emeryville, Dublin, Oakland, Walnut Creek, Albany and Richmond are also vying to grab the second campus, which is expected to generate thousands of jobs in the coming years. … Continue reading »
Berkeley Lab’s Saul Perlmutter wins Einstein Medal
Saul Perlmutter, a professor of physics at UC Berkeley and part of the Physics Division at Lawrence Berkeley Lab, has been awarded this year’s Einstein Medal, presented by the Albert Einstein Society. The medal was awarded for “discovering the acceleration of the universe” through the observation of very distant supernovae. Perlmutter shares the award with Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and John Hopkins University.
Perlmutter is the leader and cofounder of the International Supernova Cosmology … Continue reading »
Lawrence Berkeley Lab issues wish list for new campus
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released today the Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for their proposed second campus. The second campus, announced in September, is designed to consolidate four remote sites and allow for future growth for LBL, which is constrained by the physical limits of its main site in the Berkeley hills above the university. LBL is one of the Department of Energy’s national labs, and is managed by the University of California.
“Putting all those scattered facilities … Continue reading »
Lawrence Berkeley Lab ready for thousands of visitors
For most residents of Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is a mysterious presence on the hills over the university campus. Unless you work there or have business there, you won’t get passed the security on the gates.
Tomorrow, however, 4,000 members of the public will get a rare chance to visit the Lab on its first Open Day in eight years. The visitors will be able to take bus tours of the site, but the main activities will … Continue reading »
Lawrence Berkeley Lab seeks second campus
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory seems to Berkeleyans to sprawl over the hills above the university. But with only 200 acres, the lab finds itself pressed for space. Most of the 4,200 employees are on the site in the Berkeley hills, but about 20% are at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, the Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center in Oakland or the Life Sciences Division in West Berkeley.
LBL … Continue reading »
Biotech Academy students get hands-on education
The woman had been missing for six months, with no clue to her whereabouts. Now police had found her car, and it was covered with what looked like blood splatters, blood trails, and a bullet hole.
William Clark and Evanney Salisi went to work analyzing the clues. They looked at the pattern of the blood spatters and examined the ballistics of a bullet casing found at the woman’s work place. They did a DNA profile of the blood found in the car and compared it to the DNA of the woman’s parents and boyfriend. Finally, Clark and Salisi testified about the science behind their investigation. Even though the evidence was circumstantial, the jury reached a unanimous decision: the boyfriend killed his girlfriend.
While the facts of this case are real, it wasn’t tried in a real court or even examined by real police detectives. Instead, this CSI-like case was part of the summer curriculum of 28 East Bay students.
They are part of Biotech Academy, a private-public partnership that exposes disadvantaged high school students to the biotechnology industry. In the past 17 years, more than 1,500 students from Berkeley High, Oakland Technical High School and other schools have learned about the biotechnology industry by taking hands-on, college preparatory science classes in their last two years of high school and working the summer in between at a Bay Area biotech, green tech, or health care company. This year students held paid internships at Bayer HealthCare, Kaiser Permanente, The Biotech Academy, Lawrence Berkeley Lab, UC Berkeley Genomics Sequencing and Stem Cell Labs, Libby Laboratories, Tethys Bioscience, and others.
The idea is to nurture a love of science in kids who may not have thought of making a career in the industry, according to Deborah Bellush, the executive director of Biotech Partners, which runs the program. Biotech Academy also makes sure kids succeed in high school and are ready for college by providing mentors, career counseling, mock interviews, financial planning lessons, and even money for work clothes, if necessary, said Bellush. The program has had a 100% high school graduation rate the last six years, she said. Statewide, the graduation rate is 71 percent.
“You learn life long lessons you would not be taught anywhere else,” said Salisi, who is about to enter her senior year at Berkeley High.
Bayer HealthCare began the program in 1992. It wanted to expand its Berkeley campus and in exchange, the city asked the company to create a program that would appeal to low-income students. The program has expanded considerably in recent years and is now funded by foundations, individuals, and numerous other businesses. The budget for 2010 was $400,000, down from $650,000 the year before, said Bellush.
Salisi spent six weeks this summer in the pathology department at Kaiser Permanente, watching dissections, tissue analysis, and even an autopsy.
“I thought I would faint but I was really interested and I looked at everything that came out of the person’s body,” she said.
Berkeley Lab reaches out to its city’s community
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is determined to be a good neighbor and, under director Paul Alivisatos, it has launched a number of initiatives to stay in close communication with Berkeley residents.
A recently formed Community Advisory Group is holding meetings every two months with the public to provide information on the Lab’s physical planning and development.
The most recent meeting took place on July 8 at the North Berkeley Senior Center and focused on the geology and … Continue reading »
Berkeley scientist advises on clean-up in gulf oil spill
By Jane Tierney
A Berkeley scientist who is advising British Petroleum is cautioning against the use of too many detergents to clean up the vast oil spill in the gulf.
Terry Hazen, a microbial ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and a leading bioremediation expert, is advising authorities that using detergents to clean up oil-contaminated sites may make matters worse. They might cause their own environmental problems.
Instead, Hazen suggests that biomediation, a process that uses microorganisms, enzymes, fungi or green plants to repair a natural environment compromised by contaminants, might be a better approach.
“It is important to remember that oil is a biological product and can be degraded by microbes, both on and beneath the surface of the water,” said Hazen. “Some of the detergents that are typically used to clean-up spill sites are more toxic than the oil itself, in which case it would be better to leave the site alone and allow microbes to do what they do best.”
Hazen, the head of the ecology department at Berkeley Lab, is advising BP on behalf of the Department of Energy.
Hazen is also managing two research vessels in the gulf, staffed by international scientific crews from Canada, Australia and the U.S. They are sampling the gulf beaches and deep water for toxicity and levels of contamination.
Hazen has also appeared widely in the news, including an appearance on KQED’s Forum with Michael Krasny. Hazen will be on NBC Nightly News tonight.
Experts estimate that 29 million gallons of oil have leaked out of the broken BP underwater well, making the spill the largest in U.S. history. In attempts to contain the spreading oil slick and protect the fragile ecosystems of the gulf region, clean up crews have resorted to an array of oil skimmers, booms and chemical dispersants, as well as burning off the surface oil. Such extreme clean up measures are rife with unintended consequences, said Hazen.
“There are newer dispersants, such as the Correctix 9500 that have not been tested by EPA, and can have toxic effects on specific marine life,” said Hazen. … Continue reading »
by Email