Berkeley Lab

Retired Division Director Bill Barletta Honored by APS

William A. Barletta

Bill Barletta

William A. Barletta, longtime director of ATAP’s predecessor, the Accelerator and Fusion Research Division, has been honored with the Exceptional Service Award of the American Physical Society’s Division of Physics of Beams. The award “recognizes a member of the APS DPB who has made outstanding contributions to the field of accelerators and to promoting the objectives of the DPB.”

Bill currently chairs three APS committees: the Forum on International Physics, the Panel on Public Affairs, and the Division of Physics of Beams. He is author or co-author of four books about accelerator science and technology and another four concerning cybersecurity, privacy and international cyber-law, as well as, most recently, Strategic Management of Research Organizations, based on USPAS classes he has taught.

After years in research and management positions with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, during which he often collaborated with Berkeley Lab director emeritus Andy Sessler, Bill moved to Berkeley Lab in 1993 as AFRD Director, a position in which he served until his 2006 retirement. He also headed the Lab’s Homeland Security Office.

Bill has had a diverse and active encore career. He headed the Fermilab-based US Particle Accelerator School from 2006 to 2017; serves as coordinating editor of the refereed journal Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physical Research, Section A; and in addition to holding adjunct professorships of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Los Angeles, is a visiting professor of economics at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. His recent work at MIT has concentrated on the design and use of high current cyclotrons for both discovery science and industrial applications.