Katherine Yelick named director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

The University of California Board of Regents today (May 5) approved UC President James B. Milliken's recommendation of the appointment of Katherine "Kathy" Yelick as the ninth director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). An internationally recognized leader in high-performance computing and large-scale scientific research, Yelick currently serves as vice chancellor for research at UC Berkeley and has held joint appointments at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley for three decades.

"Dr. Yelick is an exceptional leader with outstanding scientific credentials," said President Milliken. "Her deep expertise in computing and AI, combined with her proven ability to lead complex scientific organizations, will enable Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to pursue new discoveries in an era of rapid technological change."

Berkeley Lab is an internationally renowned institution dedicated to addressing urgent scientific challenges, from advancing energy solutions and protecting human health to revealing the origins and fate of the universe. Managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science since 1931, the lab has earned global distinction for discoveries recognized with numerous honors, including multiple Nobel Prizes.

Yelick succeeds Director Michael S. Witherell, who has led the lab since 2016. She brings deep executive leadership and management experience across both the University of California and the DOE national laboratory system. She joined the UC Berkeley faculty in electrical engineering and computer sciences in 1991 and became a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab in 1996. Since then, she has held multiple senior leadership positions at both institutions, including director of Berkeley Lab's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) from 2008 to 2012 and Berkeley Lab's associate laboratory director for computing sciences from 2010 to 2019. In these roles, she oversaw large, matrixed organizations, managed major DOE user facilities, and led multidisciplinary teams operating at the intersection of science, technology and operations. She also held leadership roles at UC Berkeley, serving as an associate dean of the newly established Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society from 2020 through 2021 and as vice chancellor for research starting in 2022.

"I am honored to serve as the next director of Berkeley Lab, an institution that has long stood at the forefront of scientific discovery and innovation," Yelick said. "At a time when advances in AI and data science are transforming science, Berkeley Lab is uniquely positioned to lead in this area. 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."

Yelick has also demonstrated strong operational leadership in complex, changing environments. As vice chancellor of research at UC Berkeley, she led through periods of rapid change and constraint, making difficult resource allocation decisions, managing institutional risk and sustaining UC Berkeley's large and complex research enterprise under significant pressures. In her current role, Yelick oversees a billion-dollar-scale research enterprise spanning more than 50 research units and 12 museums and field stations.

"Dr. Yelick brings deep expertise in high performance computing and machine learning, along with a strong track record in research management," said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. "I look forward to working with her at this pivotal moment for the nation's scientific leadership, not only in artificial intelligence and quantum information science, but across the full spectrum of big science at the DOE National Labs that drives American innovation in discovery, energy security and more."

At Berkeley Lab, Yelick played a key role in shaping a modern organizational structure, including the development of the associate laboratory director model. She has successfully led large-scale, multi-institutional initiatives such as the Exascale Computing Project spanning the full DOE laboratory system and integrating diverse scientific and technical communities. Her experience managing these efforts reflects a deep understanding of how to align scientific priorities, resources and partnerships across a distributed enterprise.

"We are thrilled that President Milliken has chosen Dr. Yelick to lead Berkeley Lab at this critical time for science and innovation," said June Yu, vice president for UC National Laboratories. "She brings the scientific expertise and leadership experience the Lab needs to advance its mission on behalf of the Department of Energy and the nation."

A pioneering computer scientist, Yelick is widely known for her work on parallel languages and software libraries that help scientists use massively parallel computers more effectively. Her work has focused on supporting applications and algorithms that are computationally efficient, which lead to challenges when mapping onto parallel machines. Yelick has also collaborated with interdisciplinary teams on applications ranging from simulations of chemistry, fusion energy and blood flow in the heart to large-scale data analysis problems in microbial genomics.

Yelick's contributions to leadership, research and teaching have been recognized with numerous awards and honors, including the 2015 ACM/IEEE Ken Kennedy Award for innovative research contributions to parallel computing and for developing novel educational and mentoring tools.

Yelick is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Computing Machinery. She has served on multiple advisory boards nationally and internationally, including as a member of the executive committee of the Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. She has authored over 200 refereed articles and book chapters. Yelick earned her bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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