Katherine Yelick has been named the next director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), a national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Effective July 1, Dr. Yelick will be the ninth director of Berkeley Lab since its founding in 1931.
“I am honored to serve as director of Berkeley Lab, an institution that has long stood at the forefront of scientific discovery and innovation,” said Dr. Yelick. “At a time when advances in AI and data science are transforming how science is done, Berkeley Lab is uniquely positioned to lead. I look forward to working with the lab’s extraordinary community to advance its mission and deliver solutions to the nation’s most pressing challenges.”
Dr. Yelick, the Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has served as vice chancellor for research at the university since January 2022. A faculty member since 1991, she previously served in other leadership roles at Berkeley Lab, including associate laboratory director for the Computing Sciences Area and director of the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center.
As a computer scientist, Dr. Yelick is known for her work on high-performance computing, programming languages, compilers, and parallel algorithms. She has also served on interdisciplinary research teams developing scientific applications ranging from simulations of chemistry, fusion, and blood flow in the heart to analysis problems in phylogenetics and genome assembly.
Dr. Yelick earned her bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.