Biography|Michael Witherell — The Cyclotron Road Lab He Took on 1 March 2016

On 21 January 2016 the University of California Board of Regents approved Michael Witherell as the eighth director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The action item set the effective date at 1 March 2016 and named a base salary of $440,000, paid from non-state funds under the University's contract with the Department of Energy.

He succeeded Paul Alivisatos.

UC President Janet Napolitano had recommended him after a national search opened in June 2015. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz concurred.

The director's office sits in Building 50A on the hill above the Berkeley campus, mail stop 50A-4119, at 1 Cyclotron Road.

That is a documented national-laboratory workplace, not a private house.

He arrived from UC Santa Barbara, where he had been vice chancellor for research since 2005 and held a Presidential Chair in physics.

The appointment was his second turn running a DOE lab. Fermilab had been the first, from 1 July 1999 to 30 June 2005.

A laboratory portrait taken on 14 January 2016, a week before the Regents vote, is the image closest in time to the start date.

Berkeley Lab is the oldest of the Energy Department's national laboratories, founded by Ernest Lawrence in 1931.

The pin is the lab, not a current residential address.

Photo: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory photographer, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Portrait dated 14 January 2016.