News Briefs: April 18, 2008
Vaselopulos to replace Trocki as LLNS office director
Kathleen Vaselopulos, director of the Laboratory’s Prime Contract Management Office, has assumed the role of LLNS office director. Current LLNS Office Director Linda Trocki is leaving her position for personal reasons.
To ensure continuity in this important position, Deputy Director Steve Liedle has selected Vaselopulos to assume this role, effective immediately. She will split her time between her current position and the responsibilities of managing the LLNS Office.
"Kathy is ideally suited for this position, having served in a similar capacity for Los Alamos National Security, LLC, developing the processes and procedures there for effective management oversight," Liedle said.
Prior to her position at LANS, Vaselopulos held key positions with Bechtel Nevada, including acting deputy general manager for Program and Operations Support Services; assistant general manager for Commercial Management and Administration; and manager of Prime Contracts. She also has been at the Savannah River Site where she held positions in both the prime contract and legal organizations.
In addition to Trocki’s departure, Peter Offringa, one of UC’s corporate representatives, will be retiring from the LLNS Office effective April 30.
"I am confident Kathy’s broad knowledge and expertise will ensure a smooth transition," Liedle said. "Both Linda and Pete have done an exceptional job setting up the office, and in overseeing our management/parent company processes such as the Functional Management and AIM teams and the Board of Governors meetings."
Hullinger inducted into Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame
Pam Hullinger has become the sixth current or former Laboratory employee to be inducted into the Alameda County Women’s Hall of Fame.
The Laboratory’s chief veterinary officer and the leader of its Food and Agricultural Security Program, Hullinger was inducted into the select group late last month during a luncheon at Hs Lordships restaurant in Berkeley.
One of seven women inducted this year, Hullinger was recognized for her work in science.
She joins five other current or past LLNL employees to be selected for the Alameda County WHOF. They include: Dona Crawford, associate director for Computation; Hope Ishii, a physicist in the Lab’s Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics; Tammy Jernigan, associate director for Strategic Human Capital Management; Ellen Raber, leader of the Response and Recovery Program within the Global Security Principal Directorate; and Claire Max, now a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the UC Santa Cruz.
Within the past seven years, Hullinger has used her skills as a veterinarian – and her expertise in fighting the spread of animal infectious diseases – on the front lines for two of the world’s major outbreaks of animal disease foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Great Britain in 2001 and exotic Newcastle disease in California in 2002 and 2003.
Hullinger was the co-leader of a team of Laboratory scientists that, in collaboration with researchers from UC Davis and two federal departments (Homeland Security and Agriculture), developed a rapid diagnostic test in 2006 tha simultaneously tests for FMD and six other similar diseases in livestock.
Poyneer wins second UC Davis award for best dissertation
Lisa Poyneer of the Engineering Technologies Division has received the 2008 Zuhair A. Munir Award from UC Davis for her dissertation, "Signal Processing for High- Precision Wavefront Control in Adaptive Optics," under the mentorship of Bernard Levy in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She will receive the award at UC Davis on June 5.
This is the second award Poyneer has received from UC Davis for her dissertation which she completed in June 2007. This week, she will accept the Jain Prize given to the best Ph.D. dissertation in the UC Davis Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. See the Feb. 29 edition of NewsOnLine .
