Laura Berzak Hopkins has been selected as the new associate chief laboratory director for strategy and deputy chief research officer of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
The PPPL said Monday Berzak Hopkins was appointed to the dual role after serving as associate program director for integrated weapons science at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
Berzak Hopkins is responsible for more than 100 experiments for the National Ignition Facility during her time with LLNL. She also held various positions since joining the laboratory in 2012.
The seasoned national laboratory scientist was the deputy for assessment science to the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration Office of Experimental Sciences. She served as chair of the High Density Science laboratory-Directed Research and Development review committee. She was the funding manager for the weapon survivability program and a design physicist in the inertial confinement fusion program.
In addition, Berzak Hopkins was also an action officer to the Integrated Planning Group and a member of the Livermore GuideStar team and Sandia National Laboratories’ Radiation, Electrical and High Energy Density Science Research Foundation External Board Review.
Aside from her role as a leader and experimentalist, Berzak Hopkins also dabbles in science communication. She has given talks at conferences sponsored by the European Physical Society and American Physical Society and at LLNL summer scholars programs.
She taught schoolchildren at Livermore’s Fun With Science program and acted as a tour guide for the NIF. She is also the assistant editor for the quarterly publication of the APS Forum on Physics and Society.
Berzak Hopkins earned a PhD in plasma physics from Princeton University. She also holds bachelor’s degrees in physics and chemistry from Dartmouth University.
