Lab Staff Honored in 2023 Director’s Awards

Several employees in the Energy Technologies Area were honored in this year’s Director’s Awards at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab).

The Lab’s Director’s Awards program recognizes employees’ accomplishments, leadership, collaboration, multi-disciplinary science, cross-divisional projects, and commitment to excellence in support of the Lab’s mission and strategic goals. The honorees were recognized in a ceremony November 8—watch a replay of the event.

Ashok Gadgil, a retired senior faculty scientist, received a Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of his “exceptional career-long and unwavering commitment to create technological innovations for safe drinking water, clean air, sustainable energy, and reduced infant mortality that have profoundly benefitted the health and dignity of low-resource communities around the world.”

Ron Scholtz, occupational safety specialist, received the 2023 Safety Award “for his steadfast commitment to best practices in safety by creating a comprehensive blueprint for performing safety walkthroughs, and for his many leadership contributions to the Lab’s overall safety culture.”

The IDEA Award – Community went to Rosa Rodriguez-Flores “for her exceptional 25+ year track record of serving as an leader of the Lab’s Latin American Native American (LANA) Employee Resource Group and a steadfast advocate for the needs and voices of the Latin American and Native American communities inside and outside the Lab.”

The IDEA Award – Mentorship, which recognizes those “building the critical foundations of a complex mentoring ecosystem that fulfills different employee needs around mentorship,” went to a group of employees including Jerri Carmo, Kenny Higa, Shannon Kotter, and Natasha Nelson.

In the category of Societal Impact, the Interconnection Team of Will Gorman, Julie Mulvaney Kemp, Joseph Rand, Dana Robson, Joachim Seel, and Rose Strauss was honored for work that “has served as a foundational resource for stakeholders engaged in reforming how generators connect to the power grid. It has facilitated a shared understanding of the nature of the challenge and is directly motivating institutional reform.”

Melanie Sonsteng received a Tech Transfer Award for “tireless, exceptional service to Cyclotron Road and its 86 fellows and their startup companies who have collectively raised over $1B in follow-on funding and hired more than 900 employees while commercializing their groundbreaking research.”
See more about the Director’s Awards and laureates here: recognition.lbl.gov