ATAP News, May 2022

Snijders and several colleagues in Berkeley Lab’s BSE Division are working with researchers at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center, home to one of the world’s most advanced laser-based accelerators. The mutually beneficial pairing gives BELLA scientists a real-world application around which to refine their experimental laser platform, and gives the biologists a chance to test how living tissue responds to laser-driven (LD) proton beams at FLASH dose rates.

The early findings have everyone excited. In a paper published in Scientific Reports, the team shared results from their proof-of-principle experiments on normal human cells and tumor cells. The work was the first to show that FLASH doses can be delivered by LD accelerators, and it demonstrated that these aptly named radiation bursts resulted in higher survival of normal cells compared with cancerous cells.

Why FLASH and why protons?

There are two main types of radiation therapy: photon-based and ion-based. Photon-based therapies use focused beams of electromagnetic radiation in the X-ray or gamma-ray frequency ranges to kill cancer cells within tumors. The downside is that photon-based therapy also damages the healthy tissue in front of and behind the tumor in the path of the beam. Accelerated ions like protons behave differently. They deposit a low amount of energy in matter they encounter at the beginning of their path and a very high burst at the end, right before stopping completely. This phenomenon allows scientists to plot precise beam paths that deliver large radiation doses to tumors with minimal damage to tissue in front and no damage to tissue behind.

Cartridges containing human cells cultured on ultra-thin mylar sheets (left) are positioned on the cartridge inserter (right) prior to proton irradiation. (Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)

As there are a variety of particles that can deliver radiation to tumors, there are also many different ways to parse out the energy. The hit-it-fast-and-hard paradigm of FLASH radiotherapy has tantalized radiobiologists since the 1960s, when lab-based experiments suggested that FLASH dose rates can kill cancer cells while sparing a larger proportion of healthy tissue than treatments with longer, lower energy doses. However, the approach is not yet widely approved.

It is challenging to generate precise and consistent FLASH radiotherapy dose rates, even with traditional accelerators. “How do you accurately deliver a dose if you’re delivering it in a nanosecond – a billionth of a second?” explained Snijders. “That’s the challenge, because something can go wrong way faster than we can correct it.”

Following advances in technology, a small number of animal trials have been conducted in the past few years, and a single human clinical test of FLASH radiotherapy in Europe has demonstrated effectiveness in eliminating cancerous skin lesions while sparing normal skin. But researchers still don’t understand the biological mechanisms behind the impressive observations. So, understandably, some oncologists are hesitant to try FLASH doses in humans until we know more.

According to team member Eleanor Blakely—a towering figure in radiobiology and physics, who began her work more than half a century ago and remains an active researcher—this caution comes from a self-awareness of the field’s “need for prudent caution in assessing both acute and long-term effects, and for compliance with radiation safety requirements prior to the administration of new radiation modalities to human patients,” she said. Doctors and researchers “are very torn because they don’t want to delay if this is really something so different that it could revolutionize a whole field of cancer treatment. And yet we don’t completely understand how it works, even today, for conventional radiotherapy that saves lives every day.”

Berkeley Lab’s Nuclear Medicine Legacy

Nuclear medicine, 1958

Physicist Ernest O. Lawrence invented the cyclotron in 1929, and founded Berkeley Lab in 1931 to continue his work. His brother, physician John Lawrence, came with him to Berkeley to study the biological effects – and potential benefits – of the radioactive particles that Ernest’s cyclotron generated. In 1939, John led the team behind the world’s first radiation beam cancer therapy. In the decades that followed, his lab continued to pioneer the use of radiation for shrinking tumors and treating noncancerous diseases, and developed medical imaging techniques based on radioactive isotopes, ultimately leading to PET (positron emission tomography) scans and other technologies. John Lawrence also led studies on the effects of radiation exposure on healthy cells. This research helped NASA understand the risks of sending astronauts into space for prolonged missions. Blakely, an author on the recent paper, joined Lawrence’s team in the 1970s, and participated in these pioneering studies.

The accelerator in the equation

Currently, both ion- and photon-beam radiation therapies administered at medical centers are powered by conventional radiofrequency accelerators, which speed charged particles through a straight or circular vacuum chamber using electromagnetic fields and strong magnets. The cyclotron (invented by Berkeley Lab’s founder), and the world’s largest and most powerful modern accelerator (the Large Hadron Collider at CERN) are both examples of radiofrequency accelerators.

“Laser-driven accelerators offer acceleration in much smaller spaces than conventional systems and produce short intense pulses that create new opportunities for medicine and other applications, in addition to their promise for investigating fundamental physics,” said Cameron Geddes, director of Berkeley Lab’s Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division, home of the BELLA Center.

Laser-driven proton accelerators work by pointing a high-powered laser at a thin foil, thereby generating a tiny region of plasma – a state of matter where atoms are stripped of their electrons – inside a vacuum chamber. “In that plasma, strong electric fields accelerate protons and ions within a distance of a few microns (millionths of a meter). For reference, the width of a human hair is a few dozen microns,” said author Lieselotte Obst-Huebl, a research scientist at the BELLA Center, Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics Division.

In contrast, radiofrequency accelerators require massive infrastructure and beam delivery systems to produce charged particles moving fast enough for radiation therapy. (Read more about how a laser-driven proton accelerator works)

The technology has a way to go before treatment centers will be able to purchase compact laser accelerators to power proton therapy. “It is still in its infancy, I would say, but the technology is advancing rapidly,” explained Kei Nakamura, the associate deputy director for experiments at the BELLA Center, and an author on the new paper. The BELLA Center was originally funded by, and the laser built for, DOE’s Office of High Energy Physics to develop electron accelerators, he said, and the work to build proton accelerators didn’t begin until 2015. The collaborative project began in 2018, when Blakely serendipitously connected with BELLA Center scientists. “Our purposes have aligned quite well,” said Nakamura. “We wanted to have an application to work on in the lab, and the medical application has a big impact for society, so we are happy to have this collaboration.”

As of now, the distance from the point where the laser strikes the foil, creating the proton beam, to the point of contact with the cells – contained in custom-built metal and mylar film culture chambers – is only two meters. But the system that generates the laser is quite large – it takes up an entire room in the BELLA Center. Fortunately, the laser system doesn’t have to be right next to the treatment area, which is a limitation of RF accelerators in medical settings.

According to Nakamura, research from the past two decades has proven that LD ion sources have the potential to be much more compact and lower cost than RF ion sources. The lasers at BELLA have shrunk over the past 15 years and the technology continues to improve day by day, he said.

Up next

Fresh off the success of their first study, funded by LDRD, the collaboration is already deep into phase two. The BELLA team is currently developing new targeting technology that will focus the laser to much higher intensities, in turn generating higher energy protons. The existing focusing system generates beams that are only powerful enough to deliver FLASH radiotherapy to cells cultured in very thin sheets. When this upgrade—known as iP2 and funded to be part of LaserNetUS by the Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences—is completed, the higher ion beam energies will be powerful enough to penetrate deeper into living tissue. Snijders and Jian-Hua Mao, a senior scientist and co-author on the paper, will then assess the safety and therapeutic efficacy of the beam on animal models starting in an upcoming LaserNetUS run in an example of how the network is enabling new science across disciplines using high intensity lasers. They will test first on superficial tissue, then eventually on internal tumors.

“The work that we’re doing currently is fundamental to our understanding of the importance of FLASH radiotherapy effects at the physical, chemical, and biological levels,” said Blakely. “Here at Berkeley Lab, we have the capability to test all three levels, which can contribute a lot to the global effort to improve therapies.”

This article covers work funded by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program at Berkeley Lab using capabilities developed by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science High Energy Physics. The iP2 upgrade is funded by the DOE’s Fusion Energy Sciences program. When completed, iP2 will be a part of LaserNetUS, a network of advanced laser science research facilities.

Aliyah Kovner is a science communicator with Berkeley Lab Strategic Communications and producer and host of the Laboratory’s A Day in the Half-Life podcast.

A plant transfers carbon into the soil as a natural part of its life cycle. Plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen (which we animals then breathe in). The carbon remains in the plant, used to build molecules and cells it needs to live. A large fraction of that carbon ultimately enters the soil through the plant’s roots. Microbes in the soil then take this carbon and turn it into organic matter that can persist for decades, centuries, or longer.

Plants and soil microbes play a key role in the Earth’s carbon cycle – a cycle that humans have drastically altered. Burning fossil fuels heats up the planet quickly. Human land use for agriculture has depleted organic matter in the soil, resulting in an enormous soil carbon deficit that also contributes to climate change.

Pulling large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere is a vital component in virtually all plans to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less. This need is the impetus behind Berkeley Lab’s Carbon Negative Initiative, which aims to develop technologies to capture, sequester, and use carbon dioxide. Plants and microbes are experts on pulling carbon out of the atmosphere – they’ve been doing it for billions of years. But before we can harness them to help manage atmospheric carbon, we need to accurately measure how much carbon is already locked in the soil through plant-microbial interactions, or other management strategies. Unfortunately, existing techniques for testing the carbon content of the soil are quite destructive, and error-prone at large scales.

“We have a major limitation in understanding and quantifying how carbon enters and persists in soil because of the way that we measure it,” said Eoin Brodie, a Berkeley Lab scientist. “Typically we would take a soil core sample from a position in a field and bring it back to the lab. Then we’d basically burn it and measure the carbon that’s released. It’s extremely laborious and costly to do that, and you don’t even know how representative those cores are.”

Brodie is Deputy Director of Berkeley Lab’s Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division and one of the leaders of the EcoSENSE Program, a component of the Biological & Environmental Program Integration Center (BioEPIC) currently in development. EcoSENSE aims to create suites of sensors to monitor the impacts of climate and weather on ecosystem function, and Brodie and his colleagues wanted to find a better way to measure carbon in the soil. The broad scientific expertise available at Berkeley Lab, and a timely call for proposals on below-ground sensor technologies from DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), led Brodie, Persaud, and their colleagues to team up on this project. “What it really took was communication across very different programs at Berkeley Lab,” said Brodie. “We became aware of this potentially useful technology in the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division, and we joined forces.” Ultimately the cross-disciplinary team was awarded a grant from ARPA-E’s Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial Sequestration (ROOTS) program, which enabled this work.

The new method of measurement developed by the Berkeley Lab team eliminates the need to dig anything out of the ground at all. Instead, the as-yet-unnamed device scans the soil with a beam of neutrons. Then a detector senses the faint response of the carbon and other elements in the soil to the neutrons, allowing it to map the distribution of different elements within the soil to a resolution of about five centimeters. All this happens above the ground, with no holes, no cores, and no burning. “It’s like giving the soil an MRI,” said Persaud, who is a staff scientist in ATAP. “We get a three-dimensional picture of the soil and the carbon distribution in it, along with other elements like iron, silicon, oxygen, and aluminum, which are all important to understand the persistence of carbon in soil.”

“What really excites me about this neutron imaging approach is that it lets us effectively and accurately image the carbon distributions in soils at the scales that carbon accounting needs to happen at,” added Brodie. “And we can do it repeatedly over growing seasons, to see how it’s changing with different climates and land management practices. Eventually you could use this to identify what specific land management practices are more effectively drawing carbon down from the atmosphere and storing it in soil.”

“This new carbon sensing method is an example of thinking outside the box and bringing together researchers from diverse backgrounds, here physical sciences and earth science, to create new technology addressing the challenges of climate change,” said Cameron Geddes, director of ATAP Division.

Right now the project is just emerging from the lab, and Persaud, Brodie, and their colleagues are about to test it in real soils in an outdoor system soon. “We’re really excited to test this on the soil here at Berkeley Lab after the rainy season,” Persaud said.

“The next step is making this process field deployable and more automated, so that it can be incorporated onto things like combine harvesters and tractors, so that this becomes part of the sensing capabilities that you find in farms and across forests,” Brodie added. “There’s really huge, huge potential in this.”

The next phase of this research, focused on bringing the technology from lab to field, is being supported by a Labwide Strategic LDRD (Laboratory Directed Research and Development) project on negative-carbon-emission science and technology.

How Berkeley Lab can help make the dream of fusion energy a reality

ATAP—previously the Accelerator & Fusion Research Division—traces its fusion contributions back to the origins of the field in the late 1950s. Today, ATAP can contribute to both magnetic and inertial approaches in ways that range from plasma science to superconducting magnet development to advanced technology for driving fusion reactions. Fusion progress can draw upon capabilities from across the Lab, ranging from advanced materials and photon sources to nuclear science to leadership computing.

Superconducting magnets and cables underlie magnetic fusion approaches, including the upcoming International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project. To help make these machines practical, ATAP and Engineering Division expertise in superconducting materials, cables, and magnets has been parlayed into benefits for fusion power through collaborations with US ITER and (with the newfound private-sector interest in fusion energy) Commonwealth Fusion Systems and General Atomics. The program works with both the highly cryogenic traditional superconductors shown here and high-temperature superconductors.

ATAP staff scientist Ian Pong works with a machine that turns superconducting wires into cables. [Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab)

A Department of Energy Basic Research Needs Workshop on inertial fusion energy (IFE), scheduled for June 21-23, 2022, will help lay out a path for the resurgent interest in this approach kindled by a record-breaking shot with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility laser.

ATAP’s Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center and Fusion Sciences and Ion Beam Technologies programs are leaders in an exciting field called high-energy density physics with laboratory plasmas (HEDP-LP), a field that a National Research Council report described as “the ‘X Games’ of contemporary science.” This field underlies the physics of IFE. This research also includes potential new laser-driven technologies for producing ion beams, useful for everything from IFE ignitor pulses to quantum computing hardware to biomedical research and cancer treatment. The BELLA lasers are part of LaserNetUS, a program organized and funded by the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences to give researchers access to unique lasers important to these fields.

Laser ion acceleration developed at ATAP, here shown being applied by a team of biologists and physicists including (l-r) Kei Nakamura, Antoine Snidjers, and Lotti Obst-Huebl towards radiation therapy, also has importance for inertial fusion as a potential ignitor beam. (Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)

ATAP research scientist Tong Zhou conducting experiments in combining laser beams. An ongoing multi-institutional project to coherently combine the beams of many fast-pulsing but low-energy fiber lasers could be the key to simultaneously having high energy and high repetition rate. (Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab)

IFE will require efficient drivers such as high-average-power lasers, which can leverage technologies we are developing for kBELLA, the next-generation laser for accelerator experiments and potentially also new ion beam methods developed through ATAP research.

A synergy between BELLA Center, FSIBT, and our instrumentation programs also promises to be of great benefit to fusion energy: diagnostics of fusion systems using compact, precise sources of photons and of charged particles that are based on laser-plasma accelerators.

ATAP’s Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center is part of LaserNetUS, a program organized and funded by the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences to give researchers access to unique lasers. These lasers are important for an exciting and fusion-relevant field called high-energy density physics with laboratory plasmas (HEDP-LP), a field that a National Research Council report described as “the ‘X Games’ of contemporary science.”

For decades, fusion research has gone hand in hand with the fastest computers and most advanced modeling techniques. Today, ATAP is a center for accelerator modeling, which has many synergies with fusion. ATAP’s Accelerator Modeling Program is part of the push toward the exascale era of computing, together with Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Supercomputing Center and allied mathematical and computer-science expertise. Exascale simulations can help with complex and important topics, such as the microphysics of both inertial and magnetic fusion energy.

A simulation, performed with Berkeley Lab’s Warp code, of two-color laser-plasma injection. Here Warp was augmented with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory code VisIt. Innovation in modeling is an ATAP strength with several areas of fusion relevance, including microphysics of high-gain IFE targets.

Societal benefits far beyond the laboratory

Developing the next generation of researchers has long been a hallmark of the fusion-related programs at Berkeley Lab. Here, staff scientist Arun Persaud (honored with the Lab’s Outstanding Mentor Award) works with Summer Undergraduate Laboratory Internship students Tanay Tak (l.) and Lindsey Gordon on ion acceleration. (Credit: Thor Swift/Berkeley Lab)

The development of a diverse fusion science and technology workforce, and the potential of fusion in the quest for energy justice, were among the other strong themes of the Summit. “Diversity and equity are integral to how the Lab performs team science,” said Geddes, adding that “fusion has the potential to address pollution, climate change, and energy price issues, all of which have important social equity aspects.”

Thomas Schenkel, head of ATAP’s Fusion Science & Ion Beam Technology Program and an active researcher in the field, has been involved with this community since the inception of this IAEA project back in 2016 and was asked to organize the in-person workshop. Originally intended for June 2020, the meeting had to be delayed by nearly two years due to the pandemic. It was held as a hybrid event, with some attendees in the Building 71 main conference room and others online.

After an introduction and overview by Asmita Patel, ATAP Deputy Division Director for Operations, Schenkel outlined efforts in quantum information science at Berkeley Lab and UC-Berkeley, including the Advanced Quantum Testbed, the Quantum Systems Accelerator, and the Berkeley quantum network testbed. He also highlighted research frontiers and Berkeley Lab facilities that help push QIS research forward.

Tours of facilities, including the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) Center, the pulsed ion accelerator NDCX-II, and the Advanced Light Source (ALS), were featured later in the week, together with talks by scientists from UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab that highlighted the local research context.

The in-person IAEA delegates in front of a piece of atomic-energy history: a 1948 Chart of the Nuclides developed and hand-drawn by Berkeley Lab researchers under the supervision of Glenn Seaborg (who just three years later would share a Nobel Prize with Berkeley Lab colleague Edwin McMillan). The Lab made many contributions to this chart, including dozens of isotopes or nuclides and 14 artificial chemical elements discovered with particle accelerators (five of them in this very building), along with ingenious and influential techniques and instrumentation for creating and finding them, most attributable to Al Ghiorso.

“The in-person meeting helped us to make new connections and to strengthen very productive ongoing collaborations,” said Schenkel, adding that he has already published several papers with collaborators he had met in the course of this IAEA coordinated research project. More than 100 papers that have come from collaborations of members in the project.

“The meeting shows that Berkeley Lab is well positioned in the worldwide community that is applying accelerators to meet the challenges of of quantum information science,” said ATAP Division Director Cameron Geddes.

“It also served as an example of how to host a productive international meeting at this stage of the pandemic,” Schenkel noted, adding, “The ATAP Operations Team put forth a really great effort to give all the delegates a quality hybrid experience in the new normal.”

A report with summaries of key results, now in preparation, will be published in book form by Taylor & Francis/CRC Press.

The Research Coordination Meeting delegates enjoy a break from their sessions on a fine Bay Area day. Delegates came from the National University of Singapore; Sandia National Laboratories, CA, USA; Ruder Boškovic Institute, Croatia; the University of Helsinki, Finland; the Centro Nacional de Aceleradores (CNA), Spain; the University of Melbourne, Australia; the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO); the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Italy; the National Institutes for Quantum and Radiological Science and Technology, Japan; the University of Illinois, IL, USA; the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria; Sandia National Laboratories, NM, USA; Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, PRC (remote participant via Zoom); and Berkeley Lab. (Credit: Berkeley Lab/Thor Swift)

In its day, the Bevatron was the largest and highest-energy particle accelerator in the world. It was designed to accelerate protons to billions of electron volts. Just one year after its completion in 1954, Berkeley Lab and University of California, Berkeley physicists Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain used the facility to confirm the existence of antimatter by producing anti-protons.

“The Bevatron is one of the iconic instruments in the history of nuclear and particle physics. It was the lens through which humanity saw fully a universe that contains anti-matter and the fact that at the fundamental level, there exists asymmetry in our cosmos,” said APS President Jim Gates.

That discovery, which was awarded the 1959 Nobel Prize in Physics, was a significant milestone in the new era of government-funded “Big Science.”

“The Bevatron site designation is a symbol of what teams of people from many fields of science, engineering, and operations can do when they work together across disciplinary boundaries to solve a problem — in this case, unlocking the mysteries of the atom,” said Berkeley Lab Director Mike Witherell. “It demonstrated the kind of big team science that evolved into the national laboratory system and led to many more discoveries and solutions to humankind’s most challenging problems over the decades. We are honored to have this contribution to scientific history recognized in this way.”

Even after being eclipsed at the energy frontier by a new generation of strong-focusing synchrotrons built elsewhere, the Bevatron remained scientifically productive and enjoyed a series of upgrades. In the 1970s, it was combined with the Super Heavy Ion Linear Accelerator to become the Bevalac. This combination gave rise to the “Bevalac era” in nuclear science, a field still being pushed forward at facilities such as the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The Bevalac also hosted a thriving program in radiation biophysics and clinical trials in heavy-ion radiotherapy.

The Bevatron/Bevalac ended its service in 1993, and the Bevatron was demolished between 2009 and 2012. On the site of the former Bevatron now stands the 80,000 square foot Integrative Genomics Building (IGB) — home to the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI), the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), and the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC).

Citation

On this site in 1955, a year after completion of the Bevatron, Chamberlain, Segrè, Wiegand, and Ypsilantis reported the discovery of the anti-proton. In the 1960s bubble chambers here revealed many new particles, evidence for SU(3) symmetry, now known to be the sign of the three lightest quarks. Later, Ghiorso conceived and Grunder built the Bevalac by merging the Bevatron and the SuperHILAC into the world’s first relativistic heavy-ion accelerator. It accelerated ions from protons to uranium, launching high-energy heavy-ion physics and clinical radiotherapy with heavy-ion beams.

To learn more…

• Visit Particle Accelerators at Berkeley Lab: Writing the Next Chapters of a 90-Year Story, part of Accelerator Week, climax of the Lab’s 90th anniversary celebrations.
• Watch the video Excellence in Accelerators, and for a deeper dive into where we came from and where we’re going, read the companion story.
• Stream or download a video of the dedication ceremony.

The adventure was reflected in former Deputy Division Director Ben Feinberg’s remembrances as well. Recalling how Kincaid took over from Jay Marx, who was project director during the construction of the ALS, Feinberg described how Kincaid set the pace early on—from April 1, 1993, the first official day of ALS operations. “Brian used his intellectual abilities and motivational skills to bring the construction project to a successful completion, to begin operations, and to continue building beamlines at a rapid pace to serve and expand the user community.”

Kincaid at a planning workshop for the ALS in 1985

The ALS was the first third-generation synchrotron radiation facility based primarily on using undulators as insertion devices, and expansion of the beamline portfolio was rooted in Kincaid’s deep understanding of undulator physics. “If I had any questions related to understanding the characteristics of undulators, my first choice was to go to Brian,” said former ALS Deputy Zahid Hussain. “He would get excited, giving a highly comprehensive explanation,” Hussain recalled. Kincaid’s knowledge of the field set a direction for work at the ALS. “Brian directed the completion of high-brightness soft x-ray beamlines,” said Hussain, “which enabled the ALS to demonstrate the high value of light sources for soft x-ray research.”

Kincaid’s vision of the ALS extended beyond soft x-rays, and he encouraged the wavelength extension to include both infrared and hard x-rays. Photon Sciences Development Deputy Alastair MacDowell noted the director’s support of the superbend concept, which was implemented after Kincaid retired and resulted in nine productive hard x-ray beamlines.

In the heady days of starting a new synchrotron facility, Kincaid led the ALS with vision and enthusiasm. “He was a maverick and liked competition,” MacDowell said. These qualities are as much a part of Kincaid’s legacy as the scientific program he led, and Feinberg also paid tribute to his personality as he remembered his colleague. “I enjoyed working with Brian over the first five years on ALS operations, and will miss his sharp wit and willingness to speak his mind at all times.”

This obituary is based on contributions from Ben Feinberg, Zahid Hussain, Steve Kevan, Alastair MacDowell, and Chuck Shank.

ALS construction site with Jay Marx, Ronald Yourd, Brian Kincaid, and Alan Jackson. (Credit: Marilee B. Bailey/Berkeley Lab)

Here are some of the activities with which ATAP’s IDEA Committee spreads the message throughout the Division. The Laboratory’s IDEA strengths also include a wide variety of Employee Resource Groups (ERGs); ATAP personnel participate in several of them.

ATAP both leverages and contributes to the Labwide IDEA effort

Building the workforce

Playing fields are not self-leveling; we must turn action into awareness and make them that way

ATAP’s IDEA Committee has taken several steps to ensure that we are recruiting and retaining top talent and taking steps to overcome any biases.

All hiring committees are required to view and discuss “Creating a Level Playing Field,” a video resource by Stanford University professor of sociology and organizational behavior Shelley J. Correll.

The numerous and varied points of discussion include research results as simple, yet subtle, as reviewing application materials in the morning rather than the afternoon. Representation on hiring and promotion committees is itself diverse in gender and culture.

Making awareness ubiquitous

IDEA is a regular feature of ATAP’s employee and outreach newsletter

A variety of strategies are in use in ATAP to improve our IDEA knowledge and keep it front of mind. Conversation starters include a series of cards based on the “50 Ways to Fight Bias” program, which are displayed in meeting rooms, among other venues.

Tips for overcoming bias are displayed as on-the-spot reminders

A thought-provoking IDEA video by Márcia Barbosa

Staff are encouraged to include One Minute for IDEA, modeled on the existing program One Minute for Safety, in meeting agendas. Examples of IDEA discussion at ATAP Program meetings, ATAP Leadership meetings, and All to All meetings include “‘An Inconvenient Truth’: Where, and Why, Are We Losing Women En Route to Science Careers,” by Brazilian condensed-matter physicist Márcia Barbosa.

Changchun Sun, staff scientist in ATAP and member of our Diversity Committee, discovered Barbosa’s video at the 2021 International Particle Accelerator Conference. The video has been discussed as part of the strategy of increasing awareness, increasing actions, and increasing accountability. Key messages from this video include the importance of equitable treatment, empathy, compassion, and most importantly, going from bystander to upstander.

Another example of discussion at various meetings in ATAP, including a recent All to All meeting, is webinar on “Puncturing Stereotypes And Their Impact On Identity,” by Stanford psychology professor Claude Steele. He coined the term “stereotype threat” and has researched this phenomenon extensively.

Claude Steele video helps us become aware of stereotype threat and how to counter it

Steele gave a recorded presentation as part of the Science & Information Exchange, a service of the National Academy of Sciences. The presentation was publicized in ATAP’s IDEA campaigns by staff scientist Stefano de Santis, who is also a member of ATAP IDEA committee, as a necessary step in appreciating what others uniquely bring to our workplace and our lives.

Key messages from these discussions included acknowledging people for who they are, building trust by open communication, and acknowledging difficulties in relating to identities different than our own by acknowledging that stereotype behavior does exist. Understanding these behaviors is a step towards addressing the stereotype threat in society.

From this basis of, as the poet Robert Burns put it, “seeing ourselves as others see us,” we can go on to cut through the fog of our own assumptions and projections—stereotyping—and see others as they really are.

“Going from bystander to upstander” was a popular session in Safety Week

IDEA (particularly the concept of psychological safety) was a key part of the most recent ATAP-led Physical Sciences Area Safety Week. Both Pat Thomas and Asmita Patel have led Safety Week efforts for several years to increase awareness of safety principles. A key message is that anyone can stop work if they witness a safety related incident. This principle also holds true for IDEA. Anyone can be an upstander to promote psychological safety of colleagues and speak up for people who are unable to voice their concerns. For this reason, Thomas and Patel included in the agenda a seminar on “Going from Bystander to Upstander.” It was attended by 128 people and it was an excellent way to introduce this important topic to a wider audience.

ATAP also hosted a virtual division retreat with a focus on adaptive leadership, an emphasis on IDEA as an important aspect of our daily lives, a strategic planning exercise, and a look at the Lab’s stewardship culture. The retreat was facilitated by Aditi Chakravarty, Berkeley Lab’s Chief Diversity Officer.

Virtual division retreat had an emphasis on IDEA, facilitated by Berkeley Lab Chief Diversity Officer Aditi Chakravarty

Meetings that make everyone feel heard and empowered to contribute

There are also several well-known ways in which the voices of some can be co-opted, pushed to the side, or silenced outright during meetings. ATAP has taken a variety of measures to increase awareness of meeting dynamics, with special attention recently to virtual as well as in-person events.

One thing to be aware of, in meetings and other interactions, is microaggressions— “the death of a thousand cuts” for psychological safety. A effort that began with a Women’s Support and Empowerment Council (WSEC) survey on microaggressions proved particularly fruitful, opening our eyes to interruptions, “he-peating,” and “mansplaining.” ATAP’s Ina Reichel, Chair of the WSEC, was one of the leaders of the survey and analysis. The results and recommendations were presented and discussed at ATAP IDEA Committee meetings.

Based on the recommendations of the IDEA Committee, Ina Reichel and Asmita Patel held meetings with ATAP scientific programs to discuss the survey as part of increasing our understanding of microaggressions, and to discuss the importance of being an upstander for people.

Looking beyond the Laboratory

Powering the future will require providing a workplace climate that brings out the best in all

ATAP Division Director Cameron Geddes has helped lead the push for explicit IDEA representation in scientific-community planning efforts. A recent success story was the American Physical Society Division of Plasma Physics community planning process for fusion energy sciences.

This APS-DPP effort fed into the subsequent Fusion Energy Sciences Advisory Committee (FESAC) Long Range Plan, Powering the Future: Fusion & Plasmas, which has an appendix devoted to specific diversity, equity, inclusion, and workforce development.

Science is a human endeavor, and empowering all to do their best helps it move forward

The now-underway Snowmass process in high energy physics has a topical group, CommF3, devoted to diversity, inclusion, and equity. IDEA champions are working toward content in the upcoming Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) report that is parallel to that of the FESAC Long Range Plan.

Both Cameron Geddes and Asmita Patel had an active role in the Community Engagement Frontier of Snowmass and contributed to the white paper submitted in March 2022.

Learning from the best throughout the community

Leveraging best practices

We also seek out and employ resources from other institutions and from scholars in organizational behavior and leadership. Besides the several examples already discussed, a newsletter called Better Allies brings us valuable tips weekly, and the many other institutions with IDEA programs are a wellspring of useful information.

The path forward

As a result of all the IDEA-related activities to increase awareness, we have seen an increase in actions.

One example is a cohort of excellent and diverse graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in recent years. Several of these postdocs have accepted career staff positions.

Gender and ethnic diversity are hallmarks of recent postdoctoral scholars, several of whom have taken opportunities to join our career staff

 

As our journey continues and as we continue to move from awareness into action in IDEA, the final piece of the puzzle is accountability. Improving inclusivity, diversity, and equity is the right thing to do for each other, is good for business… and is a job responsibility that we are all expected to perform.

A new graphic that we can use in slides or on the Web sums up the virtuous circle of IDEA: increasing our awareness leads to increasing actions, whereupon, as we increase our accountability, we are seen to be moving in the right direction.